


North American Station

by lasergirl



Series: North American Station [1]
Category: Master and Commander - O'Brian
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-02
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2017-10-08 15:51:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 29,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/77284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lasergirl/pseuds/lasergirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Departing from the book series' events, this lengthy (unfinished) AU follows Jack and Stephen to the North American Station and Upper Canada where they become embroiled in the War of 1812 on the Great Lakes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_**M&amp;C PART ONE**_  
An AU riff of _Fortune of War_ in which I am incredibly mean to Jack, Stephen gets to angst, and I get to screw with canon (or is that cannon?) for as long as I want. It starts rather abruptly after the capture of the _Java_ by the _Constitution_ as detailed in Patrick O'Brian's book, and gets completely out of hand afterwards. Fear it.

  
The ship that carried the two of them was not a British ship of the line, nor even a humble frigate; she was an American man-of-war, the _Constitution_, and they were borne as prisoners of war to Boston in the aftermath of the sea-battle that sank Captain Aubrey's command. The hands of the _Java_ had not been mistreated by their enemies after surrendering, but Jack had been most cruelly wounded in the attempt to repel boarders, and was too ill to be transferred from the warship. Of course, Stephen Maturin, his ship's surgeon, stayed by him for the remainder of the voyage. He had, in fact, been adamant he not be separated from his particular friend and Captain. It would not do, he felt, for a ship's Captain to be cared for by another surgeon, particularly as Stephen feared Jack's hold on life was tenuous at best. He did not trust the Americans. They had been honourable, sure, in their treatment so far, but he could not tell how long their luck would hold.

In its normal condition, Jack Aubrey's natural sleep was immediate, fast and deep and invariably accompanied by rumbling snores. Stephen was well-acquainted with his noises, having been his ship-mate on many excursions, and the vessels of the Royal Navy sorely lacked proper baffling. But Jack was not snoring now, for Stephen had dosed him with a draught of laudanum and he rested in a torpor, his half-closed eyes glazed over, rocking gently with the motion of the ship's passage.

Stephen, thinking as a doctor, was concerned for his patient's limb, for Jack's arm had been shattered by a musket-ball as he fought upon the deck of the _Java_. As a friend, he was concerned more for the well-being of Jack himself. The capture had not been easy on him and, though wounded, he had insisted he be allowed to remain on deck for many watches, bright eyes fixed on the horizon for any sight of a sail. The bitter chill of the Atlantic in winter had pierced him, set him about with pneumonia and a fever, and the arm was doing poorly. Jack had been laid low for several days now, and before the noon-bell they expected to set into Boston harbour.

*

'The surgeon can only by necessity treat a single part in the thick of battle-' wrote Stephen in his crabbed and secret hand. 'He cannot conceive the future -- cannot divine what will afflict his patient after the last suture is placed -- yet that is not his concern. His is the immediate preservation of life, not limb, that occupies him.

'The physician, in contrast, must treat the body as a whole -- disease in one part may affect others, and compromise the patient's well-being. And it is this dilemma which I am faced with now, for in less than an hour the sun will rise at last and this long night's vigil shall prove to be in vain. Perhaps there was something I missed when treating JA's injury on board the Constitution, for sure, I did not get a proper look at the wound before the burning of the Java, and afterwards could only do as much as time would allow. Perhaps there is some remnant of shot, or a splinter buried deep.

'In any case, the swelling has not subsided and I fear gangrene has taken hold. This last night has been a terror; JA does not respond to my voice, and he is in the clutches of a raging fever. The infection has spread in the past day and I fear when our ship comes into the harbour, the good Dr. Evans and I must operate.

'It is difficult to remain empirical about this matter-' and here Stephen laid down his pen and buried his tired head in his hands. Through the hatchway above came the calling of eight bells and the pounding of feet as the fresh watch hurried abovedecks. In his cot, Jack stirred against the laudanum-sleep and moaned a brief "turn that man before the mast--" before sinking again. Stephen reached for the pen again and wrote:

'I should rather JA had died, or be killed myself than have him mutilated by my hand. Yet the physician in me says otherwise, and the whole must be preserved at any cost.'

Evans appeared at the narrow doorway as Stephen finished, wearing his canvas apron with shirt-sleeves rolled to the elbows. Stephen nodded grimly and sanded his pages with his final line; 'Long has JA admired our Lord Nelson.'

*

The difference was as night and day, for Jack awoke, lucid and focused, the day after he was carried ashore in Boston. He and Stephen were incarcerated at the Ascelpia, a hospital commonly used for the criminally insane, but quite dry and comfortable, and much to Stephen's preference over the damp-walled public hospital that had been the alternative.

"Stephen, love," Jack said when he came to his wits and found Stephen tending him, "I thought I had died at sea."

"All is well," replied Stephen with a sober look, "It appears Dr. Evans rivals only myself in his skill with a saw. Were it not for him, I daresay we could have lost you along with your arm."

Jack's tired face paled a little but he nodded weakly. "So it is off, then?"

"Yes. Gangrene." Stephen could not even bring himself to meet Jack's gaze. Instead, he scrutinized his hands and their recent additions of dark blood-crescents under the fingernails.

"Hm," said Jack, patting the swath of bandages of his shoulder with his left hand. "Very well. I suppose you had no choice. Where are we?"

"Boston," replied Stephen, and was obliged to tell him everything, from the transfer of the Javas as prisoners-of-war, to the pneumonia and the reason the two of them were imprisoned in a sanitorium.

"A mad-house?" Jack chuckled, his laugh a pale version of its former vivacity, "Do they think we are lunatics? Or perhaps they are afeared of my mad temper. Ha! Ha!"

"Rather, my dear, I think they believe you are some sort of intelligence." Stephen looked under Jack's tongue and checked the whites of his eyes against the light from the window. "There are men waiting to interview you when you are recovered. In the meantimes I suggest you sleep."

"Why, those devils," said Jack, sounding dazed. He took the laudanum-draught Stephen held to his lips and swallowed it to the last drop. "That they should suspect me of intelligence."

"It is a wonder, to be sure," said Stephen, allowing a small twitch of a smile onto his lips. "But not to-day. You are not fit to entertain visitors now, and much less to be cracking wise about intelligence with them. Rest now, and after you take some food, we shall see."

"Hm," Jack sighed, and with the dedication and practice of long years at sea, promptly fell back asleep.  



	2. Chapter 2

Stephen was not idle, for though he was a prisoner he was also considered a gentleman of some rank, and subsequently enjoyed certain unique luxuries. He attended several lectures of the Biological Society and proceeded to write a lengthy paper about the life and mating habits of the birds he had come to know while travelling through the lower latitudes. The habits of the blue-footed booby he know only too well (and remembered with a shudder the coppery, fishy taste of its blood far too vividly) but his empirical mind categorized and arranged his observations scientifically. His diagrams were impersonal, and nowhere did he put those curious footnotes.

Stephen had also paid a visit to a man specializing in strange creatures, a man who was long an admirer of his monographs on various flora and fauna of the Southern Hemisphere. He had presented Stephen with a wondrous great salamander, preserved in spirits, for study and dissection. They were plentiful in summer, he explained to Stephen, but were most likely crawling about in the fires in the bowels of the earth as an escape from this blasted cold. Though this was neither probable (the pits of Hell being surely too deep for a creature to tunnel) nor possible (as Stephen was sure it was a water-dwelling creature), Stephen accepted the gift with good humour. He had never seen a salamander of such size, and was intrigued by its curious anatomy.

When he returned to the Asclepia, Jack was seated in a chair by the window with one eye on the stretch of Boston harbour, and one cast halfheartedly on the tedious, messy scrawl of a letter he was composing. He looked up when Stephen came in, and his spirits brightened a little.

"Stiff wind before noon," said Jack, looking sideways at the bottled salamander. "Good lord, Stephen, what is that thing? Not a snake, is it?"

"It has legs, dear. It is called a Hellbender," Stephen displayed the jar proudly, turning it so the head of the creature refracted into an alien grimace. "My friend tells me it capers in forest-fires but I do not believe him."

"I will put it in my letter to Sophie, if you wish, though you may want to illustrate it." Jack levered his weight out of the chair and shuffled over to examine the prize. "But not today, I cannot bandy your hobbies about with your medicine. I had put down the injury so far but I cannot figure how to break it to her gently. Perhaps you should write her, I am uncommon tired."

"It is to be expected," Stephen put the Hellbender on the windowsill and helped Jack to lay down. "Of course it must be done delicately, though she is a strong-hearted creature. I could help you find the words no doubt, but none of my illustrations or specimens will alleviate your singular responsibility." In fact, though he did not want to admit, Stephen himself was part-way through a letter to Sophie and had balked at the same hurdle; he did not want to be the solitary bearer of ill news from overseas.

Jack's gaze had an apologetic air to it, and it pierced Stephen's very thoughts. "I often wondered what Sophie saw in me, as you often say, I am not a perfect specimen."

"You are more precious than any inexperienced lubber," Stephen said emphatically, well aware of his atypical use of a fiercely naval term, "I do not suppose to know what it is that she loves in you, though, as I am no great master at the workings of a woman's mind."

"Nonsense," Jack scoffed, "You have had your fair chase, Stephen, I daresay you know Diana's mind --" He trailed off as Stephen's mouth hardened and a gleam came into his pale eyes. Stephen's current fascination with Diana was somewhat dampened by her recent absconding from England with Mr. Smith, and the thought still brought a flush to his face. "Oh," Jack blustered, "I am sorry to have mentioned her, I plumb forgot."

"No matter," Stephen said, attempting to dismiss the matter with a wave of his hand, "for you might not have noticed, but Diana is much of a different mind than Sophie - she is a feral creature at heart, quick to distrust and she may bite the hand that tries to feed her. I am sure Sophie does not act that way."

"No, it ain't becoming," but Jack sighed a little as he put his unfinished letter aside. "In truth, it has been so long I could not fathom to guess at the workings of her intellect. She is bound up in raising our children, that much is sure."

"A prodigious feat, given your long absences."

Jack shrugged a little, thinking of the state of his financial accounts. "Why, I wonder, do we talk so much about them when we do so little? A man is married to the sea before his wife - she cannot love a letter with all her heart, nor bank-notes neither."

"Perhaps a woman has a different view of things," Stephen offered, though to his ears the response seemed ill-founded, so he lamely changed the subject. "You aren't in any pain, are you? I should give you a draught for it at least."

"Oh, hang the draught," scoffed Jack, "it don't pain me much. I shall be asleep in a few minutes anyhow and your doses confound me."

"Well, give me your letter and I will write what I can about your arm, then. " Stephen fussed the bed-covers over Jack's reluctant form. Jack scowled but let him; it was a battle he would not fight until he got his strength back. "At least between the two of us she will have some substance in her letter."

"At least between the two of us we may have a legible hand," sighed Jack and he laid back against his feather pillows. His normally ruddy face was pale and drawn, and his body tortured by illness to a pitiful thinness. "I have tried to print it clear but it is a damned deal harder than I thought."

"You will manage," said Stephen, and he took the letter to the window to read it.

'Sophie Dearest,' it began, unsteadily enough but at least easily readable. 'It is a curious set of circumstances that I write to you, though the telling of it all may have to rest in Stephen's hands for the most part as there are parts I cannot recall. I trust you have gotten my last letter - I sent it ashore with Barrett Bonden and the Javas upon their exchange and if they have returned to England or parts friendly to us, then you will have it.

'If, however, you haven't, the body of the letter was my day-to-day affairs and I sent my love to the children and especially you, my darling.

'The Java was taken by the Constitution, an American frigate, 44 guns, off the coast of Brazil on 29 December. From what I can recall of the battle we were sorely matched, the crew of the Java was unprepared and we were set about most awfully by their gunnery. I was wounded in the arm by a sharpshooter from the fighting tops, it took a turn and I am obliged to write with my left hand, but Stephen assures me I am well...'

The letter drifted off into a dissolute curlicue and cryptic markings observing the height and depth of the tides in Boston Harbour. By the scratch-marks, Stephen presumed Jack had been trying to complete his sentences for several days. He was tempted to take up Jack's quill and pen a few more words, though the thought appeared to him brusque and barbaric. He could not in clean conscience wound Sophie with harsh physical terms, no matter how easily they sprang to mind.

So Stephen sat awhile in Jack's chair, regarding the bottled Hellbender and the harbour beyond the rooftops. The possibilities of the two of them being separated were greater now that their captors were certain Jack Aubrey would not die from his wounds. The Americans were still concerned over the possibility that one of them was a spy - Stephen's money was reluctantly on the chance that Jack would blurt out something he thought witty - and they would be quick to condemn. In fact, Stephen cursed Jack's seemingly dauntless reserves of health; his miraculous recovery was seen as suspect enough that all was not above-board. It would be hard to muffle his humours in delicate matters, should he recover any quicker.

By the time Jack's robust snoring shook the Hellbender in its jar, Stephen had nodded into sleep, still sitting at the window with a profusion of unhappy thoughts floating about in his head.


	3. Chapter 3

Stephen awoke with a stiff neck and it was dark. The harbour was calm and silent. The only lights that showed were the dull glowing of the night lanterns rocking on board the American vessels. The room was quiet, with Jack's breathing muffled into his pillow, sprawled out on his good side.

There were footsteps in the corridor, an unusual thing, for the patients of the Asclepia were commonly locked into their wings at sun-down. They were well looked-after and the harmless fellows had the run of the wing during the day time. But it was late, well after sunset, though Stephen did not check his pocket watch to make certain. The footsteps paused outside the door (unlocked; the rest of the apartments on this wing reserved for other guests of Stephen or Jack's nature) and he heard whispers as two men attempted to locate Jack's door.

At first, he thought they meant to search the room, but as the frantic conversation continued sotto voce in the hallway, he realized they meant to do some harm. There was little for Stephen to worry about in a common search, save his own personal diary, and that battered volume was presently in his coat pocket. But he had no weapon, and he was unsure of Jack's ability to properly defend himself should the men break in. He crossed the bare patch of moonlit floor to Jack's bedside and woke him with one hand pressed over his mouth.

"Not a word," he whispered as Jack's body tensed under his touch. Gradually, recognition dawned on Jack, who had been many fathoms down in a dreamless sleep. Stephen took his hand away. "There are men in the hallway. A weapon, something, is there not anything we can use against them?"

Jack's eyes glittered in the silver moonlight and a smile crept across his face. "There is an iron bar that raises the window-shutters," he whispered merrily, digging under his pillows and giving the rod to Stephen. "I thought to use it to escape, maybe."

"Maybe," said Stephen as he hefted the iron bar. It was no cutlass, but could easily break the bones of a man's wrist should the need arise.

Jack loved an intrigue or a hint of danger at any time, and he was particularly excited by the prospect of Stephen attempting to bash someone's head in with a window-pole. "Oh for a pair of pistols," he breathed, "and the smell of powder."

"Hush, you'll give us away," and Stephen went and stood behind the door. The voices now were quite plain, having grown louder in exasperation.

"That ain't the way," one was croaking, "I know they keep that great brute Aubrey up here, I seen him at the window with his glass everyday."

"You'll wake the dead, you will," snarled the other. There were the sounds of a scuffle and then the slight rattling of the doorknob.

"I told you this was the one," hissed the first man, "it ain't locked."

Stephen's hands were shaking as the door swung silently inwards - there was an involuntary drawing-in of his breath as he raised the bar over his head.

"That one's got a pistol!" Jack cried, as he fell clumsily from his bed. And indeed, the one in front let off his shot and the brief tongue of flame illuminated the two men enough that Stephen was able to bring his weapon down with deadly accuracy on the second man's head. He fell directly and Stephen tripped over him in his haste, the iron bar flying from his fingers into the darkness.

The first man was screaming with fright, evidently having been chosen for his stealth and not his intelligence. He had evaded Stephen's clutching hands but had been driven straight towards a ponderously-rising Jack, off-balance but game. He grappled with the little scarecrow of a man, and there was a flash of steel and something sharp hissed in the air. Jack cried out in surprise, stumbling back against the window-frame. There was a splash of blood on his hand, gleaming black in the moonlight.

But Jack seized the first thing that came to him; the heavy glass jar and Stephen's salamander, and with a crash and reek of spirits, the whole thing smashed down on the unprotected skull of his attacker. There was a sudden, crushing abrupt silence.

"It does feel well to be about and out of bed," said Jack somewhat shakily, as he sank heavily into his chair.

Stephen saw the wicked blade laying at his feet and picked it up. "Did he stick you with it?"

"No, it's not much more'n a scratch," Jack plucked the bloodied cloth away from his side and gazed at the man lying half in the light from the window, the dark lump of the Hellbender twisted in the shattered glass showered around him. "I hope I did not kill him."

"It was far too late for that," and Stephen took the flaccid remains of his prodigious creature into his pocket-handkerchief. The head and tail protruded miserably from the wrapping. "Still, it may be salvaged."

"I did not mean your lizard, of course," said Jack matter-of-factly.

Their opponents were still both senseless on the floor, and Stephen checked their breathing and pulse and frowned. "I fear I might have hit this one too hard."

The sound of the gunshot and breaking glass had awoken some of the more sensible mad-men and through the clamouring that echoed in the corridor, clattering footsteps were heard, and the clash of cutlasses as the overzealous marines rushed along. Dr. Choate was red-eyed and bleary, bringing up the rear, with a dressing gown flung hastily over his nightshirt.

"What is all this about?" He was screeching, but stopped dead as he came into the room and saw Stephen leaning over Jack, searching the knife-score with his fingers.

"Bring a lantern," said Stephen curtly, "I cannot see in this light."


	4. Chapter 4

"Lord, Stephen," Jack grunted, after the intruders had been taken away and locked into a cell for the remainder of the night. They would be interviewed in the morning, when they had recovered their wits, but not until then, and Stephen was tending to Jack in the meantimes. "I have never found myself so shaken. I did not expect it."

"You are most fortunate that wretch was a poorly shot; your bellow must have shook him. How you could see that pistol I have no clue. I did not see a gleam of it at all." Stephen had salvaged what he could of the Hellbender and it was wrapped in a damp cloth in one corner of the room. "But it is true, when confronted with one's own mortality, it does tend to be disarming."

To this, Jack gave him such a look, and then broke out into laughter.

"You ain't dull sometimes," said Jack finally, wiping away tears of mirth on the sleeve of his nightshirt and still chuckling. "Disarming, ha! I should remember that."

Stephen groaned inwardly, "That was not how I meant and you know it. It is a very serious thought. Now come here and let me see your side."

Obediently, Jack padded over to the bed and laid out stiffly. His nightshirt was rent where the knife had passed and was coated in his blood.

"It has only grazed the skin between the sixth and seventh ribs," he said presently, "and were you in your natural weight, he most likely would have stuck you deeper. I should dress it to stop the bleeding, at least. Take off your shirt."

Stephen doctored the hurt with styptic and sponged away the remaining trickle of blood, but it was there his strong medical resolve abandoned him. It was not the sight of Jack's naked body that stopped him, for they two were not strangers to the warm seas and Jack had even taught him to swim after a fashion. No, he was brought short by recollection of a hundred hurts and their tracery on the flesh. It was eerie, Jack's body by candlelight, criss-crossed with scars and the forms of white bandages that showed plainly the remains of his poor arm.

"Your particular terminology," Stephen asked tremulously as he laid an ointment in the cut, "your 'by the lee' as you say it, what is its meaning?"

"We say that when the wind is taken from our sails by a frightful obstacle that shelters a stretch of water from the prevailing winds." Jack's face was solemn, his eyes focused intently on Stephen's hands and his lips slightly parted.

"Well, then, if you'll forgive me the appropriation of your apt nautical phrase, truly, the events of the past weeks have tried me and now you have brought me by the lee, as you say."

"I?" Jack meant it as a question but there was more of a guilty admittance to it.

Stephen said nothing but let the pads of his fingertips come to rest on Jack's bared chest, seeking out the patches of skin between the bandages. The joint of his thumb fit decisively into the notch of the sternum, at the base of Jack's throat. He surveyed Jack's scar-lined face, the musket-shot ear and the faded burns across his neck. There were other scars too, a pike-wound in his side, a great gash along his thigh caused by a flying splinter. He was a veritable atlas of hurts, a comprehensive illustration of the hardships and wrongs a man could take and not bend or break.

"I have sewn you back together on many separate occasions and not given it a second thought, "Stephen said pensively, "But I perhaps should just sign my name on you for my stitchery."

Slowly, very slowly and deliberately, Jack raised his hand from his side and covered Stephen's where it pressed against his chest. "Dearest," he breathed, I am not at present a complete picture of health, but if you sign my bottom right-hand corner that means you would be finished with me and I cannot have it." Indeed, Jack was looking back at Stephen with a curious expression on his face. The same gleam was in his eyes that Stephen had seen during a fine sea-chase or fox hunt. He knew the look well -- it was Jack's nature trying to show through the bluff exterior. He had seen it when Jack was reminded of Sophie, or some other fine-featured object that stirred his interests.

'Ye Gods,' he thought suddenly as a burning flush rose to his cheeks and throat - seemed to spread from the hot touch of his fingertips. Surely Jack could tell the effect; Stephen's natural complexion was a paleish, sallow colour and it was usual that nothing showed on his face. And yet, that piratical longing in Jack's eye seemed to tell him otherwise.

Jack grasped Stephen's hand lightly and raised it to his lips. He breath was a warm gentle rush along the back of Stephen's hand.

"Do not feel for me," Jack murmured, kissing the ridges of Stephen's poor knuckles, still misshapen from an overzealous interrogation years ago. Stephen's heart took a skip and a leap, scudding under his ribs. "Leastways, not for your part in any of it."

"Jack -" choked Stephen, and a sudden strange notion came to him. But before he could stop himself Jack had pulled him down and, oblivious to any pains, kissed him soundly as he sprawled across his chest.

Stephen came up sputtering, shaken, like a spooked housecat, but there was no malice on Jack's face, only a beaming sincerity. "Does it displease you so, Stephen, or did I misjudge you?" he asked.

"Jack, think of your health. You are scarcely yourself at all." Stephen twitched himself into calm composure, as if through willpower he should be able to smooth his excitement.

"My health don't figure into it," Jack frowned, puzzled for the moment on Stephen's quite singular reaction. "And anyway, I am damnably tired. I am sorry to disturb you."

Stephen left abruptly without a word, though he intended not to, but the proper words would not come to his mind. His mind was clouded, or perhaps his humours unbalanced. 'two-hundred drops shall suit me,' he thought unsteadily as he paced the corridor, 'or a little more, perhaps.' But still, he lay awake for a great while before his excitement subsided enough and he was able at last to sleep.

**

There was a hack at the gate of the Asclepia at eight o'clock, and with it came two men, polished and starched into a vague semblance of respectability. They called for Captain Aubrey from the street, though it was hardly seeming.

"Blast and Hellfire," Jack scowled at his reflection in the washstand and daubed at the razored nick under the curve of his jaw "Are those infernal buggers here so soon?"

Stephen peered out of the window and saw the hack and its team of champing, malnourished screws. A light snow was beginning to blow from the North-East, bringing low greyish clouds that eclipsed the watery sun.

"Has no one in this country any manners?" Stephen muttered, "Hallooing at any time of day, lagging at the step?"

"And their naval men are little better'n lubbers at times," Jack wiped his face with a towel and looked for a moment in the glass. He had lost a good two stone during his sickness and though his appetite had recovered, he was not at his regular bulk. His waistcoat and breeches were even a little loose around the waist, but he made a decent figure. Or he would have, if Stephen had not managed to procure a massive, formless woollen greatcoat which nearly swamped him and could have weighed a good fifty pounds. "The Constitution who took us was mostly ship-shape but for the infernal quality of her decking - less a full sweep that I would have ordered. The men were little better than privateers, not proper man-of-war's men. And you know, I spent a fair time on their deck."

Stephen said "hm" noncommittally and the image of a very stern Jack Aubrey, face whitened and taut with pain floated unwillingly into his head. It had been Jack's stubborn folly (and Stephen's inability to shift his mind) that had seen him, day after day at the rail, his broken arm bound tight, in all weather and no gear but his own bloodied uniform. Stephen was able to clap a blanket about him but by then it was too late. But Stephen could not call him out on an 'I told you so' and he only nodded his head sadly and contemplated the future that would await this newer and wiser Captain Aubrey. The meeting with these gentlemen, such as they were, did not bode well.

"Jack, you must promise me you will not joke with these scoundrels," Stephen warned him, "do not tempt their anger and by all means do not try to befriend them. They would sorely love to see you in a gaol for any crime, supposed or true."

Jack huffed and muttered that he'd "never yet found a proper officer who didn't enjoy a touch of the wit--" and was ruminating on the possibility of formulating an insult of the Americans, but Stephen interrupted his thoughts with a concoction in a chipped glass phial. Jack sniffed it and made a face. "That is powerful, whatever it is, Stephen, but what is it?"

"A nepenthe of my own concoction, a tonic for the blood and morphia for any pain, but it should not turn your head as the laudanum does. I know you wish to be in charge of your faculties."

Jack drank it off without further complaint and finished his toilet. His hair was still long and he brushed it back impatiently with his hand.

"Blast, Stephen, this is an infernal nuisance, would you mind?"

And Stephen came with a ribbon, and tied his hair off into a queue as neat as any surgeon's knot. "I should not have said I was a hairdresser," he croaked in the low rasp that served as his laughter, "but that should served you just as well."

Of course, the usual squabbles came when Stephen swamped Jack in the greatcoat.

"There are pickpockets and the regular ruffians - I do not know if you will chance to meet any today but I would not want any troubles - we have a little money still and necessarily you must have some." Stephen peeled some notes off his own fold of bills and tucked them into Jack's left waistcoat pocket where he could easily reach them. "But do not let these men take your advantage, for they are notoriously ill-bred little monsters."

"You say this as if I had never been ashore in my life," Jack blustered, feeling coddled enough without Stephen attempting to pin up his sleeve in the Nelsonic manner. "S'Blood, Stephen, leave that thing alone. I shall pass muster as I am, do not fuss with it."

"This is America," Stephen muttered, leaving Jack's sleeve long enough to retrieve a lengthy flannel scarf to wrap about his exposed throat "They will not respect your rank and I would not see you abused."

"If you mummy me up so, I shan't be able to move," sulked Jack.


	5. Chapter 5

Jack Aubrey made the hack with a few minutes before the appointed hour, looking respectable if not almost dignified, despite his pallid face and empty sleeve. Stephen watched the carriage depart from the window of Jack's room and hoped the draught would keep him level-headed.

In his time, Stephen Maturin had recourse to laudanum and was well-acquainted with its effects on judgement. But he was also no stranger to all kinds of pains, from the simple hurts of the flesh (and their more deep-reaching complex cousins, surgical wounds) to the more distant ache of the heart and mind. He himself had been the victim of melancholy and a number of bodily hurts. He knew that Jack's injury had taxed him, and though he would not show it he was still in pain. Wounds of the physical sort could often cloud the faculties more than the opiate to alleviate their sting.

Stephen's regret, past being unable to keep his surgical instruments while a prisoner of war, was his certain poison, the tiny phial of Sudden Death he habitually carried. He was also concerned for jack and would have given him a phial too (or at least a heavy scalpel-blade to defend himself) if he thought it would be of any use. But no, there was nothing he could do, and so he turned to the sad, shrunken package of his pocket-handkerchief and his great salamander's remains.

*

Jack's journey in the hack was mostly uneventful, except a stray cat ran under the wheel and spooked one of the horses, jerking the carriage about most frightfully. He was feeling ill by the time he arrived at the American Admiralty, a chill sweat gathering on the back of his neck. The sharp winter air caught in his throat when he dismounted the carriage, but he breathed in a few welcome lungfulls before being lead into the squat stone building.

Thick leaded glass cast fractured patterns of sunlight across the unwelcome grey hall, the only spot of colour in the place being two sour American marines, stiff-collared and shouldering rifles. They took him up the wide ugly staircase and into an underheated, over-furnished office.

"Captain Aubrey," said Commander Chauncey when Jack was deposited in an uncomfortably overstuffed elbow-chair. "It seems we have much to discuss, as you are no doubt aware, there is some matters which need your counsel. These items were taken from you aboard the Constitution. I daresay you can recognize them?" He brought out a sheaf of papers and began spreading them across the surface of his desk. Jack glanced cursorily at the top pages.

"I should have to see each on to attest to it," he said stiffly "but the top is my commission of the Leopard before she was sunk, sir."

"You are governed by your country's Articles of War, are you not? Which it specifically condemns any espionage or defection, punishable at court-martial." Chauncey scowled and shuffled the leaves around, selecting a few written in a wide-looped, spidery hand. He laid them out for Jack to examine.

"I am familiar with the Articles and follow them as conscientiously as I am able," said Jack. The offered papers were not familiar to him, nor could he recall ever having seen the handwriting before. When he reached out to read them through, Chauncey snatched them back with a sour look of suspicion. "Sir, those are not mine."

"Don't give me your lip, Aubrey," Chauncey snarled, "these were seized in your effects and I have ten good men who will swear to it. These would surely have you hung for treason, if I were to exchange you as a prisoner. England fairly hungers for treachery, you know, and she thrives upon the punishment of her own men."

Jack's heart sank, though he did not show it. He commanded his expression into one of mild disagreement, a slight frown on his face.

"I do not know anyone in the service as a spy," he said patiently, as if by repetition Chauncey would deviate an inch, "nor have I ever acted in that fashion."

"These papers," said Chauncey, fanning them in the air, "are correspondence from an American agent, thanking you for the receipt of vital information on the movement of the Java and where she was headed. That you provided the necessary particulars to have her burned and sunk, Aubrey. It doesn't look good."

"The only items I have of note between our countries is that your Navy is brutish and lubberly," said Jack pleasantly.

Commander Chauncey's face went a furious deep scarlet and he leaped to his feet and beat on the desk with his fist. "You may be some damnable prodigy on your own seas, but this is my command and these are my men! You have no say in the matter. How would you do if I clapped you in irons for that cheek?"

But Jack just smiled grimly. "Sir, I should regret that very much. Accept my apologies and if you choose to interrogate me using force, so be it."

Chauncey broke into a wide, evil leer and he patted Jack on the shoulder in a fatherly manner. "Good, good fellow," he said, "I enjoy a man with fine naval taste."

*

Jack ambled into Stephen's little room with its particular view of nothing much at all but the exercise-grounds and straightly-plotted flowerbeds. Stephen, in keeping with his habits, had not dined at all and what weak coffee remained in his cup was stale and stone cold. He was knuckle deep in his investigation of the Hellbender's digestive tracts and looked up with annoyance when Jack appeared.

"Jesus and Mary," he said hastily, wiping his hands and immediately forcing Jack into an elbow-chair, "You're as white as a sheet, Jack, and I did say not to exert yourself beyond reasonable expectation. What have you done?"

Jack shook his head in bemusement. "I could not say for certain, but I spoke with the Commander and he would rather see me in the stocks or a noose than walking around free."

Stephen, in the meantime, had poured off a mild dose of his tincture (his private store he had been allowed to retain) into a wine-glass and brought it to his stricken friend.

"You should not have been called out at all," Stephen said peevishly "He will undo all my careful physic. Have you eaten?"

"Why, not a crumb," Jack said, "send for some of the cold beef pie perhaps, before I faint away."

They dined, Stephen rather frugally for his part, and Jack ravenously. It was a while before some semblance of humanity came back to Jack's expression, but once it did he was obviously mollified with laudanum and good spirits. He did not express to Stephen the matters of his conversation with Commander Chauncey, nor did Stephen ask him. Finally, Stephen managed to package a dazed, uncomplaintive Jack Aubrey into his own bed with no more trouble than it took to shed him of his breeches. Jack, though he was known to love his drink, was quite hopelessly bemused on Stephen's tincture of opium and could not treat the operation as anything but a farce.

"Think of what the men should say if they see you," his face was high-coloured in good humour but bound to pass into pure exhaustion before long. "Was you to take any advantage I should be quite a-lee, a babe unawares. Or is it a sleeping dog? I forget the adage now. Stephen, ease up! Your hands are quite cold, you know."

Stephen, who had remained impassive to this point with no more expression in his face than it did when he presided over a surgery, had to allow himself a smile of certain tenderness. Jack Aubrey was naturally ebbulient; cheer and goodwill graced him as easily as sun shone or wind blew. Stephen had yet to see him truly miserable, particularly when spirits or good food had swayed him. The Jack Aubrey that Stephen methodically undressed was uncharacteristically blushing like a girl, and his face was the most open and adoring declaration Stephen had ever seen.

"Why," Jack was rambling, even as Stephen unbuckled his breeches at the knee, "I should turn myself before the mast or declare an Article of myself. My word, a Thirty-Two?"

"I should not think you'd have any reason to accuse me of dereliction of duty in times of action," Stephen grunted. Jack's breeches would not come undone; for some reason they were ties in a most unrecognizable snarl.

"My life, Stephen, that is Twenty-Six, and not an offensive one at that, nay, I am thinking of the terms and circumstances, this is indeed not sodomy but it is lechery of some kind I may be sure there is some word for."

Stephen stopped in his struggle and gave Jack such a piercing, wounded look that it brought Jack up short. "At times, I am quite capable," he said hollowly, and did not sound entirely certain of himself, "but occasionally you may remember I have seen you and a thousand other men mother-naked and they have not seen fit to joke about it."

Jack stammered, apologetic at once. "You know I did not mean that - God forbid, I believe you did smoke that incorrectly - I did not intend to break any law, only say that there is - Gods, Stephen, these is no word for this queer thought I had, surely it cannot be entirely sinful -"

"Sinful or no, Jack, I am afraid your breeches are hopelessly ratted, so any hopes you may be harbouring of lechery you may dismiss."

"Oh, nonsense," Jack laughed, fumbling at his waist, "I seem to have dropped a few stone and was obliged to arrange the laces. The knot is probably not familiar to you, a one-handed sailorman taught it to me when I was a midshipman on the Bellerophon, an uncommon piece of work. You have but to tug at the free end and it comes loose."

Stephen clucked sternly before Jack's plain cheer swayed him, and he finally helped his friend into bed. "I believe this is the second time in as many days," he smiled. "You cannot hold your doses or your tongue - pray lie quiet until you are sound and then perhaps we can discuss the depths of your proposed lechery." He bent swiftly and kissed Jack, a mere brush of flesh but it signified. " But at least today, you are quite through."


	6. Chapter 6

With Jack Aubrey safely (perhaps not so safely, though Stephen, one hand rubbing at his bottom lip) shut up in his room and not likely to stir until supper-time and beyond, Stephen descended to meet with the good Dr. Choate. His prompt treatment of the assailants in the night-time had endeared him very much to Stephen.

"They have said nothing so far," sighed Choate, glancing at the two bruised, sullen creatures through the barred window of his observation cell. "In fact they are quite decently behaved for such crude little animals."

Stephen peered into the chamber with mild curiosity - the light of day made quite different characters of the two intruders. They were both ill-nourished, hollow sunken cheeks and dark-rimmed eyes. The older of the two could not have been more than eighteen, his companion a deal younger, judging by his still-oversized hands and feet. Both had the skittish, hungry look of those familiar to gaol cells and alleyways. They would have been the men pressed by conscription instead of a hanging or a slow starvation, and perhaps Stephen may have pitied them but for the circumstance.

"Would you happen to have a pistol?" Stephen casually asked of Dr. Choate, "I feel these poor wretches are in need of some stiff persuasion.

Dr. Choate's breeding prevented him from giving in to a full-faced grin, but he did at least smile and nod his head. "They are never loaded, but I have a fine pair of duelling pistols a grateful patient once gave me. He shot himself though, poor fellow."

Indeed they were a pretty matched pair, smooth-oiled mahogany grips inlaid with a silver raptor of an indeterminate type, beak open and wings spread wide. Stephen took them from the padded presentation box and caressed the chased barrels lovingly. The new flints, gunpowder, rods and shot were all present.

"The powder has been kept quite away from damp?" Stephen sighted along the barrel.

Dr. Choate nodded, "I can hardly expect to walk around with a pistol," he said humbly, "I am a healer of men and they must necessarily trust me or it is of no use."

"They must fear me," said Stephen coldly and he measured the powder and rammmed the shot home. "It may be far better if you are not present for this interrogation, some things might turn a man's stomach, even a physician."

Stephen disliked the idea of a brutal and invasive interrogation, in fact the thought of it made him somewhat queasy (no mean feat for a sea-going war-surgeon). He himself had once been tortured, quite in vain it seemed, for he had been quite prepared to die in the retention of his information. Though the memory of pain had been baked from his sinews by the Mediterranean sun quite some time ago, occasionally he could recall the exact sounds of straining tendons and cracking bones.

He shook off this dark thought with an easy shrug, and took up the pistols. The two prisoners watched him with their blackened eyes as he entered, and wriggled in a minute distress when Choate locked the heavy door behind him. Stephen made no pains to conceal his weapons; instead he knelt in the centre of the floor and laid them both in front of him.

"No doubt by now you realize the gravity of your situation," he said sternly, peering at them with his strange, pale eyes. Neither of the prisoners flinched, but the younger of the two snuck his thumb into his mouth and began to suck. "Assaulting an officer in the service of His Majesty's Navy, even though he is a prisoner in this country is a vile offense and if you are not pardoned you will be punished. If you are working under the direction of some other man, you are obliged to disclose it. Otherwise, you will be taken to the stocks or the gibbet for violation of your laws of comportment - that is to say, the gentlemanly agreement between our Navies. I am afraid their protection does not extend to you."

The elder spat on the floor between his legs and scratched himself with a feigned indifference. Stephen observed his rigid posture and taut jaw, and was secretly pleased with his attempt at intimidation.

Making a great show of it, Stephen lifted one pistol and cocked it. "Also, as you may or may not have been informed, I am a physical gentleman and I have no compunction against shooting the two of you right now. I have not had a fresh, undamaged corpse in quite some time."

*

"You might be interested," Stephen said when he came into Jack's room "to know where those two weasels were engaged. Neither of them are a stranger to a press-gang, it would seem, though they are both still quite young. They deserted and found themselves on the wrong side of the Lake. They were enlisted, carried to Boston, and deserted again. You said yourself the American Navy fairly hungers for men."

"Ravenous," said Jack mirthfully, "Imagine that, the American Navy not promising enough to keep British deserters enlisted. They are right swabs, I take it?"

"Indeed, the one has a strange aversion to speech - a stammer most prodigious that puts me in the mind of Padeen - the other so full of curses you'd think his mother laid with the devil himself." Stephen croaked in merriment, "Oh, and there are these."

Stephen brought the pistols out from their cocoon of his bundled coat and Jack's eyes lit up at the sight of them.

"There is not much shot or powder - they are Dr. Choate's personal possessions - but he lent me the use of them and did not seem to notice I did not return them. I feel we could make an attempt. That is, if you are well enough."

"Nonsense," Jack scoffed, "I am as well as ever I was and I am no mean shot with a pistol. But... your experiments? Surely we cannot bring those with us."

Stephen pondered this, and the curious (but not unique) circumstance of having only one shirt to his name. It felt remarkably liberating.

"Jack," he said fervently, "we may only have this one chance for freedom, and for your sake we should be taking it. No, it is not worth explaining or predicating. Do you feel we may have a chance at this?"

Jack by now was bursting with enthusiasm, all traces of his weakness and injury erased. He could hardly be persuaded to stay still, indeed, his florid countenance fairly glowed in excitement.

"We should have to make each shot count," he said "and there is the question of tides. I daresay you have been watching them? They are most duly noted in the margins of my letter to Sophie. I say, if you could make them out at all. Nelson's handwriting was quite appalling at first, you know."

"Of course," said Stephen, for whom the tides help little fascination and who could not be counted on to recognize on unless the rising waters engulfed his person or his clothing, or had left his dory stranded upon twenty-five feet of flawless sand. He had suffered through all of these misfortunes in the past and generally left the telling of the time and tides to those rightly qualified, they being Barrett Bonden and Jack Aubrey the most commonly.

"We shouldn't need to carry much," Jack continued on, "and of course I am afraid it is near impossible to retrieve my commission." His face reflected a momentary sadness before it was replaced with a bullish scowl. "Chauncey wants me in irons, he did not mean to return them."

"Jack, what exactly did the Commander say to you?" Stephen was suddenly concerned, feeling that this was possibly the reason for Jack's strange behaviour upon returning from the Commander's interview."

"there is a certain set of documents he would not let me examine, ones that were not mine. I had never seen them before, and I did not recognize the writing. He said they proved I was a spy."

Stephen frowned "Jack, why did you not tell me before? He will never let you free! he could have you gaoled, and I mean worse than this."

*

There was regular traffic in the harbour basin, governed by the tides and sunrises and winds. An endless flock of fishing dories passed through the straits - the American sail was not permitted to pass the British blockade, and this was the lynchpin of Jack's scheme.

"What we need is a vessel small enough to pass unnoticed, a fisherman's dory, perhaps. You know that our Navy stands to at the mouth of the harbour at dawn, hoping to draw out the Constitution or the Chesapeake. The Shannon is commanded by my cousin, Philip Broke. I daresay I recognize some of his men by their carriage, too Stephen, and his accompaniment is the Tenedos. See here--" Jack lent him the spyglass to peer down at the harbour waters "--as he has been every day since our capture, I'd wager. I should think Chauncey won't stand for it much longer, the sheer impertinence of it."

"You mean we should reach either the Shannon or the other and so escape that way? Chauncey would have us shot to pieces! Surely they would blast a little boat to match wood!"

Jack considered that thought a while, though a cursory shrug was all it received before his enthusiasm broke out again.

"When I say we shall go for the Tenedos, it will not be with soldiers at our heels," he said swiftly, "it will be nighttime when we take our leave and most likely morning before anyone should discover we are gone. By that time I trust we will have made one ship or the other, at daybreak or shortly after. There is," he admitted "the matter of appropriating a small boat, but that should prove to be no great obstacle. I see plenty of scows and dories, or - heavens - even a rowboat!"

By any sort of standard, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin had been granted uncommon luxury in their capture and incarceration. In fact, but for Jack's maltreatment at Commander Chauncey's hands, they were remarkably well-kept. Their appointed rooms were sparse but comfortable, and Stephen was free to come and go between Jack's chamber as he pleased. So, he was no stranger to the detachment of bored-looking marines who patrolled the corridors.

If they had been true, British Navy marines, honour and duty-bound, they might have posed a serious obstacle to Jack's plan, but Stephen had observed their lax discipline in the evenings, after the patients had been locked into their wards for the night.

"Whist," he said "they drink small-beer and play an abysmal game of whist. One of them will take a turn about our wing every hour or so, but they do not take their watch seriously. I have no doubt we could evade them." Stephen had methodically assembled paper cartridges for the duelling pistols. He gave one to Jack who hefted it in his left hand and drew a bead on the cross of the window-panes.

"It is a little awkward," he said shortly, before tucking the pistol into his belt, "but I shall manage. How I wish I had my boarding cutlass, Stephen!"

"I know Dr. Choate has a lock-up in his office - it is where he kept these pistols and his surgical tools, among other things - it may be there is a sword. You would be considerably better-armed, it is true."

"No matter," said Jack with a shrug of his broad shoulders, "if it is possible."

"How is your shoulder?" Stephen inquire, "in case there is a skirmish, I should not want to heave to sew you up again. Let me bind the stump with padding, at least."

"No, Stephen," and Stephen saw that jack's expression had hardened into the tempered-steel countenance that could lead a shipload of men to battle. Stephen knew it well, though it was not always expressly for him, but it gave him a shivering thrill all the same. "I shall worry about that afterwards, once we are well away." Jack folded the thick pages of his letter to Sophie in waxed cloth and tucked them into his breast pocket. There was another sheet, which he passed to Stephen. "Usually this would be given to my second-in-command. It is my goodbyes, should something happen."

"I shall take it, dear," said Stephen and he folded it away against his breast.

"I regret the loss of my commission papers, hang and blast Commander Chauncey," said Jack as he slipped into his greatcoat. Stephen pulled on his own threadbare black coat and a dusty muffler. "And I am sorry about your Hellbender, Stephen, truly."

"It was a wealth," but Stephen shook his head "I have my sketches and notes of course, and reflections of its nature. That will suffice. Are you ready?"

"On my word, and we must not shoot if possible, the noise will alert those damned sentries."


	7. Chapter 7

The hallways were dark and silent, burning with lamps that cast a warm flicker against the austere tiling. As they crept past the other prisoners' doors, they could hear the noises of slumber. Someone farther away could be heard sobbing in a great black depression.

"Poor devil," Jack whispered, and Stephen hushed him as he darted ahead. They were within sight of the main doors, a grand marble entranceway separated from the rest of the building by intricate iron grillework. Stephen had passed through these gates many times on his journeys about the town, and meant to penetrate the lock in order to move the tumblers.

Stephen heard the muttering and complaints of the watch officers, stabbing out their cigars and joking with their companions. The upstairs watch seemed either rather too late, or very early.

"Go ahead," said Stephen, pushing Jack before him into a darkened antechamber where the watch would not go, "conceal yourself, unless you deem I am in danger, then you are free to shoot someone." Then Stephen turned back to the hallway, rushing face to face with the guard of the watch.

"Good evening, Doctor Maturin," said the man, a stout little soldier with a duelling scar across one cheek. His name was Pomeroy, and Stephen had seen him on occasion, walking the upstairs hallway, or guarding the door as he was now.

"My patient," said Stephen hurriedly, stepping to the doorway and noting all three guards "he suffers from a terrible fever, I fear brought on by his uncommon exertions of the afternoon, and with Doctor Choate away I have no draught to treat him." Stephen sidled his way into the inner office and made for Dr. Choate's physic cupboard. All three of the guards were well into their liquor and gambling, and evidence of their excesses were strewn about the office.

"He didn't leave instructions for you, I'm afraid," said Pomeroy with a stammer, attempting to shield the small card table with his body, "but if it is as you say, there is a key on my ring for that cabinet if you like."

"It is laudanum I seek," said Stephen boldly, taking the proffered keyring and fitting the tiny gold key into the lock. He swung open the door and snatched a square bottle from the uppermost shelf. "Upon my word, a whole pint!" By then, his questing hands had discovered the hilt of a heavy cutlass, lion-headed, and realized it was unsecured. He had it from the scabbard in a flash and his left hand reached to his belt for the pistol. In close quarters, unused to shipboard action, the soldiers were easily flummoxed and overcome. One fell with Stephen's pistol-shot deep in his heart, and the second bled out from a sword-slash on his neck before he could bring his musket to bear.

Pomeroy turned with a gasp half-caught in his throad and his face blanched white as Jack's bulk filled the doorway behind him. In the brief, yet frantic struggle, Jack got his arm about the man's neck and a single wrong twist snapped it. The body fell, and Jack stood there, breathing excitedly over the man's twitching form. The smell of spilled beer filled the small room.

"My compliments, love." Stephen bent and wiped his blade on a coattail and gave the cutlass to Jack. "We are wanted men now," he said as he retrieved the keys and they made their way to the grilles. They unlocked with a heavy, prehistoric clank, and they were away and through. Once outside, Stephen re-locked the heavy main doors and left the keys on the doorstep. "However, there is no need to perform sloppily."

Once or twice, Jack stumbled on the rough, icy cobble and went to his knee, but the two of them crept away in fair time. By the luminous greay of false dawn, they had reached the steaming harbour basin with its rough catcalls of departing fisherman's dories and the gentle licking of waves at the greasy piers.

"And your boat?" Stephen drew up patiently, allowing Jack to take the lead. He refrained from commenting on Jack's hoarse, apoplectic blowing. It reminded Stephen of a fat pony he had once hired to carry his baggage in Spain: the beast was unaccustomed to the task and did very poorly until he was oblliged to shift his heavier things to his own horse, and even then he had to lead the pony by the nose to keep it from wandering off in search of shade. He knew Jack Aubrey, though, and loved him dear enough to know it would be a mean stroke at what little pride remained in him if he were to mention it.

Still there was no sound of running feet or of musket-fire, no alarm-bells from the hopsital on the hilltop. Stephen dared to hope that they had got clean away.

But not yet; there was the matter of a boat, and this Jack took upon himself to find. He gave his sword to Stephen and wandered down the pier. The fog closed around his figure and he soon disappeared from view.

Stephen sank down against a thick piling, crouching as he had seen the little Indian boys do when confronted with the possibility of a long wait afoot. Despite the situation, Stephen's heart was quite calm, his wits composed. The oily fog held in a veil between the sea and the land, a thick mist through which other men could only be seen as ghosts, moving silently beyond the pale.

The whole affair left a bitter taste in his mouth, even beginning with the capture of the Java (and before that, the beastly Leopard) they had been ill-used at the hands of the Americans. Though were it not for the Constitution, Stephen supposed, Jack may well have died. Their surgeon was a most deft hand with a knife and uncommon free with a draught or two in his patients' dire needs. At least he and Jack had not been locked up like common man-of-war prisoners in a gaol or a stinking hold, but neither had they been exchanged like common prisoners either. At the time of the transfer of the Javas, Jack Aubrey had been most unwell, labouring under the dreadful pain of a deep-seated inflammation of his broken arm. He was also considered a prisoner of rank, important and valued enough that he couldn't be turned over with the rest of the crew. And, to add to that, he had been raving for quite some time about leeches and billy-goats that Stephen had recourse to gag him when the Captain of the Constitution had come below to explain the terms of their retention.


	8. Chapter 8

Stephen preferred not to dwell on the circumstances; his rememberence of the voyage North to Boston was nearly as weak as Jack's, for he had been below in the sick-berth most of the time and the chill Atlantic climate kept him in the eternal process of seeking warmth belowdecks.

Indeed, the weather at present was definitely cold, and Stephen folded his hands into his pockets in an attempt to keep them warm. His fingertips came into contact with a little damp bundle. Curious, he drew it out and examined it. It was his poor, solitary and much-abused pocket handkerchief, wrapped around the half-flayed, cartilaginous skull of his Hellbender. Pleased and astonished (for Stephen quite often mislaid his treasures forever, and there were few who could appreciate or preserve them) he surveyed the curious eye ridge and fragile jawbone. At least there was a pleasant souvenir of this wretched capture.

From his right, there was a low whistle in the fog and then Jack loomed out of the greyness with a beatific smile on his face.

"Stephen," he said, offering his hand to pull him to his feet, "There is an obliging gentleman in posession of a stout rowboat, and I think he means to let us have it. He is most impatient to meet with you, he has some King's English but says he is Irish. I told him you speak it and that made up his mind."

"I speak it miserably," Stephen acknowledged, "but it serves."

The 'obliging gentleman' was a rickety, shore-bound fisherman, so gnarled and twisted he stood scarely up to Stephen's chest. He proved friendly indeed, even commiserative, and pointed out the boat with broad Irish hints to Stephen's pocketbook.

"He says we might have it, and could be better persuaded by the show of gold. You are fortunate indeed that I changed our bank-notes upon my last outing." Stephen frowned at the rowboat, laid up at an iron ring alongside the rocky edge. "Are you sure it will be seaworthy? What would you normally pay for it?"

"It is dry, fresh-seamed and true, it may lack a coat of bright paint but she floats," said Jack. "I am not interested in bargaining, give him what he asks for it."

Stephen scowled but negotiated with the fisherman, and after he had handed over the several coins, the arthritic man grinned toothlessly and waved a knobbled hand out to sea.

"He says, 'God be with you, but you will miss your tide'," Stephen relayed to Jack. To the fisherman he said, "God, Mary and Patrick be with you."

The going was slow, even for Stephen, who was habituated to rowing in an unseamanlike fashion, facing ahead. Jack had chided him for it often but he'd always been more comfortable knowing where he was headed instead of where he had been. For the moment, though, Jack had coerced him to sit facing the stern and so, with each of them to an oar, they laboured at pulling the little boat out to sea. Despite Jack's orders to "row dry for a change"' Stephen was shipping a little seawater with each stroke.

After fifteen minutes had passed in the treacherous pale fogbank, the sounds of the quay had drawn much quieter away to starboard. Somewhere back in the town a churchbell tolled the hour.

"That makes it six," said Jack, grunting as he rowed, with sweat running into his eyes.

"Are we to expect your squadron soon?" Stephen panted, "Or perhaps they chose today not to stand in."

"Nonsense," Jack scoffed, "you know they are here. Did you not hear the ship's bell a moment ago? I do believe we are close."

Indeed, Stephen strained his ears and heard the sounds of running feet, though faint, and the vicious seamans' curses of "damn your limbs" filtering over the water. In his excitement though, he pulled too hard at the oar and the awkward thing slipped its oarlock and skidded along the gunwale.

"Hold off!" bellowed Jack, but Stephen had already scampered after it, tripped and lost his balance. He toppled over the edge of the boat, tilting it crazily.

"Shannon Ahoy!" Jack's commanding naval voice pierced the fog even before Stephen's shoes disappeared under the surface. "Man overboard!"

With some satisfaction, Jack heard a bell tolling in haste and more stomping of feet. On deck he heard a cry of "Blue cutter to larboard!" and he peeled off the awful greatcoat and dove out of the rowboat.

The water was freezing, a terrible shock to his overheated body, and the air would have been driven from his lungs in surprise had he not had the sense to clench his jaw tightly shut. In the charcoal murk he saw a pearly trail of bubbles indicating the doctor's descent, and he kicked downwards until his hand caught a luminous white ankle. Jack pulled, and the rest of Stephen drifted into view. He had an expression of stark terror on his face.

The surfacing was followed by a great deal of coughing and sputtering, and Jack yelling for Stephen to "clap on to the oar, damn you," before he sank again. Somewhere in the midst of the dreadful cold and salt there was the hailing of the blue cutter's crew, and strong arms heaving the two of them into the bottom of the boat. For a while, all Jack saw was the solid, all too solid, blue-painted planking awash in seawater, and then hands passed him up the side lashed into a bosun's chair. The first thing he said was "Look to the Doctor," and the last was "damn your eyes, Stephen," before he fell unconsious.


	9. Chapter 9

The glow was neither growing nearer nor withdrawing, though it seemed to be doing both at intervals. Stephen, through half-opened eyes spent a fair while trying to decipher the elliptical movement until it dawned on his that perhaps it was not the light moving after all; it was his hammock, gently swinging against the swell of a ship in motion. Then he came to himself, or as close as he was able, and opened his eyes fully. He was in a hold, a warm and tolerably dry little cabin and a midshipman with a pale, pinched little face was watching him intently.

"Sir," said the boy, "I should go and inform the Captain you are awake," and off he went before Stephen had even a chance to observe if this was true.

He lay there a moment more, feeling the relaxed swaying motion of his cot and the wonderful warmth of his fingers and toes. Curiously, he remembered every moment of he near-drowning, up to the part where Jack Aubrey, in a prodigious show of heart, had grasped his leg in a strong handhold and pulled him round. The rest was only a blur of darkness and a sound not unlike the wash of water alongside a hull; but Stephen thought it more likely it was the rush of blood in his ears.

Then there was several sets of muffled footsteps and Stephen looked to the door to see a compact, severe man shipping Captain's epaulets on his blue shoulders, and behind him the selfsame midshipman that he had awoken to. Behind them was another pale, ascetic man who Stephen supposed was the ship's doctor.

"Dr. Maturin," said the Captain pleasantly, his rich accent belying his stern appearance, "I am Captain Hyde Parker, of the Tenedos. Mr. Storey here tells me you are awake, and I am glad to see it. And this is our surgeon, Dr. Hannah."

Stephen moved to shake their hands but discovered that the pleasant mummied feeling of his blankets was the result of being lashed into his hammock along with several woollen wrappings.

"I have never seen so much seawater come out of a man's lungs," said the doctor, and peered in his eyes and examined Stephen's tongue. "But you seem quite well for it. Captain Aubrey says you are accustomed to breathing underwater."

"Does he, now," Stephen snaked his hand out to greet the Captain. "I was concerned for him, but if he said that he must be in health."

Parker laughed genially. "Indeed he is, and a more pleasant fellow after such a ducking I have never seen. He was been awake for the last watch and more. In fact, I believe he is abovedecks."

"Might I be permitted to see him? I am his physician and a while ago I took off his arm. He has a tendency to overexert himself."

"He said you might say that. After fishing you out of the sea, I expect you cannot having it both ways."

Stephen smiled along with the Captain, and listened pleasantly to the talk that followed, not concerning himself with remembering most of it. He was very comfortable all bundled up and swaddled like a babe. Parker soon took his leave with the midshipman, leaving Stephen alone with Hannah.

"So you are Dr. Maturin," said Hannah, "I am heartily pleased to make your acquaintance. It is your treatise on the blue-footed booby I have read most recently. You far surpass any naturalizing I could perform, I am afraid."

"Charmed," said Stephen, realizing at long last he was naked under all the blankets. "I pray, could you be so kind as to pass me my drawers?"

But Stephen's clothes were still sopping wet and he came on deck instead in a borrowed set of warrant-officer's cold weather gear and a scarf tied over his bare head (for his wig had survived the ducking but was steaming and curling in a corner by the galley stove). He found Jack at the taffrail, looking astern to the white foaming wake of the Tenedos.

"There you are, my dear fellow,' he clapped Stephen on the shoulder with an expression of joy. "It is as you had hoped, we have got clean away after all!"

Stephen watched a bird, a common gull, sail across their wake. There was a broad band of green to larboard. "Then we are not headed to England?"

"I think not," said Jack thoughtfully, "Captain Parker dispatched a portion of his stores to Broke in the Shannon and was given orders not to return until fourteenth June. We are heading to Halifax from what I can judge, or perhaps further down the mouth of the St. Lawrence. There will be a packet there to take letters if you have them, Stephen, but there will likely be no post for us. We shall have trouble travelling without our papers."

"Surely your word will stand well with the Commander here? Or is it an Admiral?"

"That would be Robert Barclay, or whomever they have promoted to succeed him. Captain Parker told me the post had been sorely needed - there is quite a skirmish up here on the Lakes."

"It seems you have indeed been up for sometime," said Stephen, regarding the western landmass with indifference. "I did not expect it. Do you not feel the cold still, in your bones?"

"I am tolerably well," was what Jack had to say to that, as though leaping into icy water was an everyday occurrence. He would not have thought twice of it, sure, had it been the pleasant Baltic or the Tropics, but Stephen knew the Atlantic in early spring was another matter entirely.

Yet as offhanded as those words seemed, there was the sharp flint beneath, the fortitude of the Jack Aubrey Stephen had known these last years and more. Perhaps they had grown too lost, too comfortable and familiar with each other. Surely that could not be all for ill. But then Stephen had seen Jack at his most tender, most vulnerable, short of the wedding-bed (and even then, Stephen supposed, he would not blush or turn a shoulder).

Stephen surveyed his stern-faced companion awhile, letting these thoughts flow past just as easily as the ship's wake played out foamy green behind them. Jack had been hard done by, that was true, but he was in no way diminished: his ruddy face glowed in health, his loose hair a veritable mane about his shoulders, streaming away to starboard with the carrying wind. A leader, yes, but more particularly a good friend and companion.

"That is how many times I have been saved from drowning? Six?"

Jack beamed "I believe it more like twenty, dear doctor, and we are due soon to dine with Captain Parker in his cabin. I am fair clemmed with hunger." Jack glanced at the slightly oversized set of clothes Stephen wore.

"That Midshipman Storey told me you received the Captain naked, is it true?" Jack's red face crinkled into a wide smile and he began to laugh heartily. Stephen huffed and fussed until Jack's mirth subsided - and it took a fair while.

"I did not wish to offend, of course," he explained, "in truth I had no inkling of it until Hannah untied me."

**

Captain Parker's table was initially an awkward affair, with Stephen seated next to Hannah, and across from him Lieutenant Campbell and White, Captain of the Marines. Captain Aubrey was at Parker's right and was distinctly ill-at-ease next to the officers and several midshipmen present. Stephen noticed it, of course, but Parker did not and Jack retold the Java action and the boarding by Constitution and the dreadful voyage to Boston as well as he could recall.

It was the beef that put Jack in his mood - it was the last of an old, tough steer that had been slaughtered only recently as the fodder ran out - and the steak skidded around his plate, actively resisting his intrepid attempts to cut it to pieces. Storey, the little midshipman was forced to bite his tongue choking back his mirth, until Captain White kicked him under the table. He wore an expression of wounded affront until finally he drank too much of Parker's fine port, turned a glorious scarlet about the ears and offered Jack to hang it all and cut the steak himself.

There was a sudden and close, wretched silence round the table that even Stephen noticed, being deep in a discussion with Hannah about vestigial toes and claws in dogs.

"If you would be so kind," said Jack Aubrey pleasantly as he passed Storey his plate, "not too small if you'd be obliged."

Mr. Storey was, as the punishment called for, sent up to the mizzen crosstrees after dinner, as soon as he was sober enough to climb.

"Well, perhaps the next time it may be soup," said Jack morosely as he and Stephen crouched on lockers in their modest compartment. Some of the crew from Tenedos had been called aboard Shannon as fighting hands, and their Second Lieutenant had gone with them. The leonine ferocity and grace had left Jack and he simply looked like a man, a tired and haunted man fast approaching his middle age.

Stephen, who always looked elderly when crammed belowdecks, nodded his assent though he could think of nothing to say in this case that would be a panacea to Jack's wounded pride.

"Good God, Stephen, a midshipman! I think he is the youngest, too, what an upstart! If I had been in Parker's place I should have disrated him."

At that point, to spare Stephen's presence, Hannah came to the door and requested his presence, for a cormorant had caught up in the starboard netting, if Dr. Maturin would like to see it. The neck was broken but all else was in its rightful places.

"If you would excuse me," said Stephen, "and perhaps the crosstrees will help him see the error of his ways." He said the words, but his heart was not truly in it.

Neither, it seemed, was Jack's, but he bade the doctor a fond goodbye and after several more minutes broke open his wax-sealed package bearing his letter to Sophie. It had survived the ducking quite intact. Poor thing, really, she must worry herself terribly.

'Dearest,' he started afresh, the pen skittering awkwardly in his hand. Then, Jack put his thumb in the ink and cursed heartily for a while, then sucked the offending marks away. 'You should never believe our good luck -' and then 'luck' he crossed out and replaced with 'good fortune, for following my own observations and with secret design, Stephen and I were able to effect and escape of sorts by boat. The doctor, bless him, fell overboard and the last minute and I dove in to rescue him! You should have seen the look he gave me, a drowned cat ain't even a fair comparison!

'We are to land at Halifax or nearby, I am afraid we might not find passage home until we are confirmed. Or it may be that Stephen has his own orders to carry out here. Either way, I will send word as quickly as I am able, indeed I hope this letter will never touch terra firma until it be the shores of England. Give my love to the children, sweet, and save the largest piece of it for yourself. Yours, Jno. Aubrey, R.N.'

Jack looked over the body of his letter with a keen eye, intent to recopy it fairly so it could be read, and it occurred to him that he had not, in fact, gotten Stephen to say anything medical about him at all. That could never do, with that dreadful unspoken wound and his sinister handwriting.

'It should grieve you to know I was wounded,' he wrote laboriously in the blank space reserved for Stephen's explanation, 'when a swivel-shot struck above my elbow. Initially Stephen thought the arm could be saved but was mistaken and off it came. He is cleaner than a cat, my dear, and the scar is as neat as even I could wish - quite handsome and I shall show it to the children when I am home again. I am quite well, fully recovered.'

The last line irked him and he struck it out and chewed at the end of his quill awhile. Then he wrote 'I am better than ever,' put it aside and set to copying it under his swaying lantern.


	10. Chapter 10

As it happened, the approach to Halifax passed them by a long, double-tongued inlet with an island in the centre. Jack Aubrey had heard of it, if he hadn't seen it before, and he was quick to inform his companion of its particular wonders.

"See there, Stephen," he said enthusiasticallly "at low tide that whole bay - even here where we sail - is a broad plain of red mud - only a trickle of ground-water, yet at her height the tide fills the basin."

"Remarkable," said Stephen, his eyes cast to the green shores momentarily. He was ruminating on the plumage of the cormorant, which had affixed itself to his person peyond his ability to brush it lightly off. He had never missed Jack's shrewish manservant Killick before in such a capacity. "Do the ships drift away, then, and return?"

"The ones that are not made fast," Jack told him, "but those at port careen over on their sides while it ebbs and float when it flows again. I imagine you may find all nature of birds and sea creatures on the flats."

Stephen rolled his eyes and shook his head as he picked the down from his coat front. "I don't see why you must tempt me with fanciful suppositions I am not permitted to verify - it is if I showed you an enemy vessel and forbade you to fire upon her."

"But Stephen, I did not mean to put you low. I only supposed you would find it fascinating, and anyway, there are tides in Halifax you may be sure, though not as great."

"It is not the tides I fancy," and Stephen leaned on the larboard rail, watching the grey waters rushing past the ship's side, musing upon the wonders beneath the surface.

Their disagreements were common occurrence, and had been ever since their very first meeting at a chamber music concert; Stephen objected to Jack's enthusiasm, and the two were soon fast friends. They were by now so used to the squabbles and upstarts that it only mildly ruffled their goodwill, and their continual disagreements and rectifications only served to deepen their friendship. For every argument, Stephen thought, they had twice the amount of respect for each others' strengths and weaknesses, and the fact that Jack had mentioned the tidal flats to Stephen meant something enormous or prodigious was afoot in his heart.

Stephen counted five species of gull and saw two cormorants carrying long silver fishes before the Tenedos beat up the coastline to Chebucto Harbour. Jack went belowdecks for a time and when he returned he had a grave look.

"Parker will carry us no further than Halifax; his orders are to cruise the coast and to take prizes, not ferry us to and fro. I will enquire for the Commander when he go ashore. We may be detained awaiting his transport, but at least we shall be among friends."

Stephen listened to him with half a mind, his other reserves contemplating the cormorant's curious ability to swallow a fish of inordinate size. Did the dissection show any unusual attributes? He knew that some constrictive snakes, great long brutes, unhinged their skulls at the jaw and so were able to consume creatures of a greater size than one would expect. He thanked Jack and went below to set down his ruminations in writing.

The heaving-to and casting of lines took no more time than a proper man of war's crew should, and by the time Stephen had sketched out a few observations in his lead-bound journal, a mate was at the cabin's doorway, begging his pardon.

"Which the Captain sends his compliments and good wishes, we have arrived at Halifax. Captain Aubrey had already gone ashore and sends word for you to meet him at the Pelican."

Stephen thanked him, and said it was his honour and privilege to do so. His meagre posessions were packed in no more than a few minutes, and he soon joined the crew at the rail.

"So this is the New World," he remarked as he was handed down the side by anxious hands. They had grown accustomed to his mild and unassuming ways on deck and knew he must be guarded as a child from the seas. Perhaps Captain Aubrey had taken a word with them.

However, fortune, for once in "Lucky" Jack Aubrey's career, seemed to have deserted them. It was a fine day, but a Sunday or something resembling a Saint's Day, and none of the officials assigned to their posts were actually attending them. By the fifth and sixth missing officers, Jack had grown weary of the chase and reunited with Stephen over a dinner of lamb chops and gravy at the Pelican, the local public house.

"The rest of the day is to be yours, it seems, since we cannot do business. It is too far to sail to Fundy, alas, but the clerk at the Admiralty -" and he let out a string of curses halfway under his breath about the Admiral's choice decision to take to the country with his mistress that Stephen plainfaced ignored (it bordering on the dreadful violation of the Articles of War) "- the clerk assures me there is an inlet not far from here where the tides do ebb so one may walk the sea-bottom, and you may do some collecting there if you desire."

The prospect was enticing to Stephen, who had taken advantage of Jack's dashing about by visiting both an apothecary's shop and a glass-blower's to purchase some refined spirits of wine and several tight-stoppered bottles. He had also bought an unlikely piece of baggage, a sort of leather satchel with long straps to carry it all.

"Remarkable work, that man," said Stephen after their dinner, showing his bottles packed away with straw. "These should never spill a drop. Quite superior, even to the glazier's in Boston, and I never would have expected it here, of all places."

Jack gazed around the tiny, muddy street and naked, ugly rockfaces stretching away to the Battery with a shrewd eye. "Sometimes it may be," he said, "we find a diamond in a sow's ear. Or is it a pearl?"

Stephen shook his head and gathered his things, and they set out for the notorious inlet.

"Tell me, Stephen, what exactly is it that you observe on these occasions?" Jack asked this shortly after Stephen had trodden ankle-deep in an obvious puddle and snagged his already-disreputable black coat on a thorny hedge. "Mindful, now dear, the ocean will still be there when we arrive, you know."

"It is one thing to observe the tides and winds, for surely a great rock or landfall will not shift its position in the span of a few minutes, but it is an entirely different matter with the fauna, you will find." Stephen smothered his indignations as Jack's warm, strong hand disengaged the thorn bush from his coat with no more trouble than brushing off flies. "Many thanks. What is present this moment may be gone the next, through predation or the ill-will of men. Please, mind your sleeve."

Jack paid little attention to Stephen's warning, but plucked the offending bit of lace from the thorn bush and placed it in his pocket.

"Really, you know, Nelson had the proper idea to keep himself out of the verge - he used a pin."

"Capital," said Jack, but he looked away and Stephen was mildly ashamed at his own cheek.

"But Nelson wasn't much of a naturalist, I recall," he added weakly, "perhaps he never had the urge for it."

"Perhaps tomorrow we should be able to find the Admiral. I pray he is not at sea, in any case. The clerk had distressing news about the new Commander, he has already gone West, struck inland for the Lakes, that devil, and with ice-floes still melting in the channel. It is either madness or brilliance." no I totally did NOT just use that quote… oh god, I did….

Soon they came out upon a promontory, a little narrowing at the mouth of an estuary. All manner of seabirds were gathered about the shores, which tumbled down to the rippled flats of dark, slimy mud. Upon this bed, grey worms and some shellfish gleamed in the sunlight.

"Oh, Jack, this is remarkable, upon my life! There are three - no, four - different kinds of stork, or is it a heron? And such sundry things I have not seen. I fear I should not be able to repay you for this!"

"Well then," said Jack "perhaps you should take your precious chances now. The ebb is nearly over. I shall watch the mouth of the inlet and call when you should return. We will discuss payment at a later time, perhaps."

Stephen, in his haste, quite ruined his shoes and muddied himself about quite horribly in the stinking, teeming mud. He glanced back at Jack no more than once or twice, so intent he was on his annelids and crustaceans. The clams he dug out with a sharp stick, and of them there were no less than three varieties. He picked up numerous shells as well, the place being used on occasion for fishermen to shuck their catches. It was only when the stinging-cold seawater began tickling around his feet that he came to himself and hear Jack's powerful seagoing voice hailing him from shore. He was quite laden down, and the mud sucked at his heels more and more with every step. The water was lapping the mud from his shoes by the time he returned, sweaty and sodden, to the rock where Jack awaited him.

"Any closer and you should be like that poor devil," said Jack, pulling him up the embankment. He pointed out beyond their promontory towards the tidal shallows. Stephen shaded his eyes with a filthy hand, and looked out beyond the point. Working against the current was a grass-green scow, the stern laden with a full net of fish. The fisherman, a tiny black figure, was pulling at the oars quite strongly, the while his boat was being carried out to sea.

"That white-capped line there," explained Jack, pointing, "is the tidal bore; the returning sea in a body flows backwards, up a river or a small bay. That fellow is in a rip-tide, as you can see. The bore must reach him necessarily."

Stephen watched in blank horror as the foaming bore drew ever closer to the green scow. Now, it was scarcely a fathom from the stern and the boat was moving steadily backwards. Jack did not even avert his eyes.

The bore struck, broke over the boat's stern and capsized it. Before the fisherman could strike for an oar or his floats, the rip-tide sucked him and the boat under with no more than a small splash.

"There, you see?" Jack shook his head matter-of-factly "That is why I shall not let you anywhere near the Bay of Fundy."

"Mother of God." Stephen looked at the estuary and the flock of birds were gone. The waters had quite filled the little inlet once more.


	11. Chapter 11

Upon the following day, brushed and priddied as much as he could muster, Jack paid a visit to the Admiralty to find an ill-tempered official sorting through a veritable sea of papers. This was the Secretary of the North American Station, Lieutenant Richard Appleton, R.N. and Jack was put immediately in the mind of his obstinate steward Killick, just from the very first glance of him.

"If you please, sir, the Commander has already left. Two weeks he was here, enough to set the whole place in an uproar, and now he ain't. He marked up ship frames and we sent his mailbags on. I say it's impossible to settle your account unless you speak to him directly. What do you want?"

"Your Commander--" Jack said patiently, watching the bullish Secretary turning over files in his seemingly endless search.

"That is Captain James Yeo," said the Secretary sourly, "and the Naval Yard ain't what it was even three weeks ago, on account of him taking all the stores upriver. Best large-grain powder, all the cannon and carronade he could carry. It's a wonder his ship floats at all."

It was no surprise, for Jack had expected this and knew the Admiral was even more parsimonious than his secretary.

"Pray tell the Admiral I will see him at his leisure," Jack snapped, biting his tongue to keep from voicing any more than those few words. "In a day or two, perhaps when you have found your rosters again."

"Bloody Post-Captains," the Secretary was heard to exclaim upon Jack's departure, "what kind of swabs they take us for."

**

They had taken adjacent rooms at the only inn that was not a bawdy-house, in deference to Jack's rank and position. Stephen wouldn't have minded, even if the whole staff was mother-naked; he needed the rooms for his specimens and to rest his weary body, and a hotel or a whorehouse would have done admirably either way. In the end, though, they had both paid the extra shillings and taken a key each for the snug, dry and relatively warm little rooms.

Jack Aubrey was sorely aggravated by his fruitless talk with the Admiralty and so, in retaliation he invited Stephen to dine with him. Stephen did not drink, at least not glass after glass of cheap port and poorly-mixed grog. True, he was known to have a glass or two in toast, but only at table, and usually only under pretension of doing right by his Captain. His true tongue was for the nefarious double-edged tincture of laudanum with which he was accustomed to dosing himself. The taste was still upon his lips when he joined Jack at table.

The inn-room was a loud, dark and crowded affair, well-packed with any number of fishermen and rowdy longshoremen. In better circumstances, there would have been several sail of man-of-war's men attending, but there were only a few and those officers of some respect at least apprehended Captain Aubrey in an attempt at hospitality.

All of Jack's talk was for naught, however, and any man he spoke to mentioned the awkwardness of the Secretary and his disdain for work.

"You'd be better off take a slow transport upriver than you would be waiting in line for his help," one of the officers (an aging Post-Captain who hoped at least to die within sight of land) shook his pint mug in the general direction of the Admiralty and swore a few healthy curses. "He don't understand the great honour of bribery, nor do he appreciate the subtle art of intimidation. He's thick, mate, thick and slow as cold tar. You'd be better off without the daft bugger."

Jack was, by this point, too far into his wine for the confirmation of his suspicions to dampen his spirits. "Then it is worked the same here as it is home in England, and it is good to know that the Appleton don't fall far from the orchard, Ha! Ha!"

Stephen scowled at the abysmal attempt at humour and broke a corner off his stale bread with nervous fingers. The laudanum, he expected, had most likely been cut with brandy or even base rum and the small glow it had awarded was all but extinguished under the tough mutton-chops he'd nibbled on.

"You must excuse me," Stephen made a clumsy leg and excused himself from the table, "it grows late, I fear." He pushed away from the inelegant spread and threaded his way through the crowded house. Of a necessity, his mind strayed to other subjects. The present composition of his tincture distressed him a little, but not as much as the interesting snail he had discovered along the tidal flats, with its great pale-brown shell and unusual proboscis.

Stephen returned to his rented room and lit a lumpy taper to sit over his notebook and specimens. Not caring much for sights or smells (particularly smells, when one was aboard an aged ship of war with ripening bilge-water in the hold), his recent collection was spread out across the bare floorboards. The shells and various stones were drying and exuded a fishy aroma. The organic specimens were neatly bottled up, stopped tight in the glazier's remarkable glass bottles.

The real focus of his concentrative powers was to be a peculiar large and ancient lobster that he had bought from a local fisherman down at the docks. It was a massive, ponderous blue-and-green creature with remarkable staying power. Its great claws were bound with marline, and it had been without a drop of water for some time, a good three hours since it had been fished from the depths. It had trundled about quite happily over supper-time, though the last hour seemed to have been hard on it. Stephen found it under his bed, nearly expired. The lobster gave only a slight twitch or two when Stephen picked it up by the carapace and set it on his lighted table.

It was similar enough to the spotted tropical creatures he had eaten, enough so that even as he worked away with his scalpel and retractors he felt his mind begin to wander. Surely, Jack was under enough pressures already that he needn't add his most recent observations to the array; there was a letter even now residing in his bosom that wished him the best of luck, and hoped he might be able to journey past Montréal to bear certain documents to a French-speaking agent there. It was nothing to concern Jack over, of course, for Stephen's matters were his own and he very rarely spoke of them to others.

The lobster gave a final, ill-timed lurch, sending the retractors clattering to the floor. Stephen stared at the obstinate remains for a while with an expression of abstraction.

"It is in no way an affair of mine to decide," he concluded eventually, "I shall go where he needs me, if he should give me that choice. It should not be my decision in the end."

Stephen went to his coat pocket and drew out the small bottle of laudanum to measure another dose. It could not be entirely without potency, so he poured another fair dram into a glass and gulped at it fitfully. Sleep would not come, though, as it so often avoided him, and so he remained awake, staring out his tiny blurred window at the mud-filled streets below.

Heavy footsteps at the door caught his ear, and when he turned, Jack was standing in his doorway.

"Your pardon, Stephen, I could not go to bed without looking in on you. You are well, I trust?"

Stephen nodded distractedly, watching the raindrops streaking down his panes. "I am quite well."

Jack beamed at him, a knowledgeable glint in his eye. "You ain't lonely, are you? For I was going to turn in, but I find you still sitting up."

You are drunk," said Stephen, "Upon my word, Jack, you are completely soused!"

"And I have my good reasons, don't I?"

"It is hardly the impression a King's officer wishes to make in the colonies," Stephen sniffed "and besides I had warned you against drink - see how it inflames the tissues - it is bound to wreak havoc with your constitution."

"Blast my constitution," said Jack venomously, settling upon the edge of Stephen's bed. "I have had enough of all kinds. The Americans hide behind theirs, and our sailors are slaughtered by her. You would even mollify mine with a vile attempt at sobriety and I will not have it!"

"Why Jack, that is an uncommon delicate turn of phrase, where did you hear it spoken?"

Jack flushed to his yellow hair and scowled, "it is my own, Stephen, I have been known to have a wit now and again."

Stephen bit his tongue, not wanting to press the issue with an untimely remark. "And that is well, quite well, I daresay," he offered instead. "Jack, dear, you are seated upon my bed. Were you warming it for me or are you contemplating getting one of your own? It would seem a tight fit for the pair of us."

Jack sprang up clumsily, crying "do not let me stand in the way of your going to bed! Or, should I say, sit! Ha! Ha! Perhaps I should let you lie, then!"

Stephen had every intention of dismissing him with a curt 'until morning,' but somewhere in his somnolent musings he was compelled to say differently. "No, Jack, I would be very much obliged if you would stay." He drew up short then, amazed.

Jack, too, seemed astonished by the words, for he took a few paces toward the door before he checked himself and turned back.

"Stephen, I - this is not a jest?"

Again, the chance to redeem himself, but Stephen said "Never in life," and that decided it.

**

And it was true, the narrow bed did not exactly leave elbow-room (or leeway, Jack chuckled) but at first they did not notice. Stephen had intended to say something a little less solemn, and Jack himself had not really meant to reach out for Stephen's shirtfront in such a persuasive manner. Certainly they did not intend the meetings of hands and mouths with naked skin, or the awkward, impromptu scene that followed. Jack rid Stephen of his waistcoat and shirt in an admirable few minutes, while Stephen returned the favour (after kicking off his shoes) by stripping off Jack's naval jacket in only seconds flat.

The laudanum-glow pervaded Stephen's limbs, and in the golden torpor he found himself caressing Jack's bare skin with a tender touch, following a broad ridged scar across his chest with two fingertips. Jack, with a cluck of his tongue, rescued Stephen's hand and placed it more firmly onto unmarked territory before pressing his mouth to Stephen's exposed neck.

There was something rough and exhilirating about their contact, with their half-stifled gasps and gritted teeth. Jack's skin tasted inexorably of the salt water Stephen purported to run in his veins, and his skin was burning hot to the touch. And Jack was every bit as forceful and enthusiastic as Stephen had expected him to be, his heavy body pushing against Stephen with a warmth and vitality. He bared his throat to Jack's hungry mouth, letting the trail of questing bites string along his collarbone like pearls. Jack's hip was butting against his, his breaths insistent and pleading.

"Why, Jack," Stephen gasped between ravaging kisses, "is this truly the place? When anyone may discover us?"

Jack paused in his exploration of Stephen's neck and sank his teeth gently into the place where it joined the shoulder. Stephen wriggled beneath him, and Jack gave the flowering bruise a swab with his tongue. "It is such a perfect thing, it would be a pity to waste it."

"Then I do not question it," Stephen breathed. The heat of Jack's body radiated into him, licking fire along his ribcage and between his thighs. "I should not fear corruption."

"Oh-" cried Jack, his hips bucking against Stephen's steady hand "-I have passed beyond corruption long ago." Between the hot breaths and the soft murmurs of Stephen's passion, Jack found his own satisfaction and fell, gasping against him.

It was after that intense exertion of affection that Jack made his quip about the leeway of the narrowish bed, though he allowed that it was still considerably more expansive than either of their cots on the Surprise.

"I am thankful at least that this bed does not sway to and fro quite as violently as my cot does," Stephen admitted. He had managed to fit himself in beside Jack's larger body, mindful of his tender places, curling his pointed chin against his left shoulder. They were in a considerable state of undress - neither of them were fully naked - and a couple of meagre blankets had been pressed into service to cover them both. Stephen was content for the while to stay, basking against Jack's warmth, until even his fingers and toes had no sense of the sea's bitter cold remaining in them.


	12. Chapter 12

Morning dawned unassumingly, grey and rainy, in a veil of light fog that streamed against the windowpanes. The weather did not deter the fisherman, and so by the time Stephen was able to force himself downstairs, the inn-room was practically empty.

Jack Aubrey was occupying himself in one corner with a plate of eggs and several rashers of bacon, followed closely by a steaming pot of coffee. It was a breakfast that any ship's cook could be proud of, though a shrewish steward might find the serving of it barbaric: not a chafing dish in sight.

"Ah, Stephen, come and avail yourself with some of this bacon! The coffee, I fear, is somewhat shameful but it is a fair deal better that Boston." Jack offered a dented tin mug of the brew and turned back to the eggs. "I had a wicked great headache this morning but the coffee has cured it. For a while I was uncertain if I should live!"

"That is a diagnosis you are sadly unqualified to make, for all love." Stephen gingerly took two pieces of bacon and a lopsided egg and began to slice them into very fine strips. "Though I expect that your headache may have something to do with the quantities of drink you took last night."

"Oh," said Jack, hastily averting his eyes at the mention of the very evening. "Oh, yes, of course it is, Stephen, I remember."

Stephen pursed his lips and studiously ignored Jack's bluster, concentrating instead on the complete maceration of a particularly savoury bit of bacon-rind. When he looked back, Jack had a most concerned and affectionate expression on his face.

"Jack, please. You look quite like the cat who has swallowed the canary."

"I am quite sober, I assure you," said Jack. "I was merely remarking upon the fact."

"Then perhaps I might remind you that the Articles of War govern our conversation as well as our public actions and we are neither of us permitted to discuss whatever might have occurred behind locked doors." Stephen was, after all, a careful and meditative man, quite capable of total inaction if his judgement deemed it correct. Any slip on Jack's part now, however brief, could be a danger to both of them if rumour spread. "Might I have your word on this, Captain Aubrey?"

Jack's brow twitched moodily, and he cast his eyes downwards to the tabletop. He drew his fingertip along a knife-gouge in the wood in distraction. Still, Stephen watched him. Finally, Jack's eyes flickered up and met his gaze.

"Very well, Doctor Maturin," he said, and offered his hand. "On my oath and a handshake, dear sir."

Stephen, for appearances sake, shook heartily and returned to his bacon. They ate in silence for a while more, until Jack drained the coffeepot dry and sat back with a satisfied grunt.

"I trust you will be ready to sail at noon, then?" Jack beamed with obvious delight at the look of absolute amazement upon Stephen's face. "Hah, it is so, then! I did not think you listened to a word I said last evening anyhow."

"Last evening?" Stephen soured, thinking upon his various intelligences he would have to collect so early in the day. It would be difficult in a strange city and with unreliable, colonial agents. "I recall a number of words spoken last evening, Jack, but I rather believe travel arrangements were not among those pretty mutterings."

Jack blushed handsomely, a fine rosy glow gracing his cheeks. He was in fine health, now that the waters of Boston Harbour and the looming prospect of eternal incarceration did not haunt him.

"Well, in truth, I did not mean quite so late in the evening - you are correct, though, I may have said a few things - no, I am speaking of our supper with the good Master of the Percée, Captain Lavery, and the several ships' officers." Jack covered his brief embarassment with a mournful exploration of the empty coffeepot, and a discreet call for another pot, if you would be so kind, to the inn-keeper's wife who was the cook. "You know my struggle right now with the damned Secretery, that infernal swab -"

"I believe I was aware of such a thing," Stephen said mildly, not putting too fine a point on his statement.

"Then you recall his deepest inability to assist us in any way - he will give us passage Westward, only Westward, for he will not send us on a transport bound for England."

"But why not?"

"I expect he has his own reasons, Stephen, we shall let him alone and take advantage of Captain Lavery's generosity." The new coffeepot arrived, nobly steaming, and Jack helped himself to another cup.

"Generosity, it would seem, only in the direction farther away from home."

"But we have an ace, you see." Jack smelled the coffee and found it to his liking, and stirred in an amount of fresh milk (a substance scarce on board a ship of the line). "Our Lavery was shipmates with the Commander-in-Chief, Peter Warren, who is now the Admiral here. If I had known that from the start I would never have spoken with that infernal Appleton to begin with."

"Then we are to go home after all?" Stephen dared to allow himself a brief thrill at the thought. To see Diana again, perhaps, and to see his musty, cosy rooms at the Grapes again would be a kind of heaven in itself. But Jack did not seem as pleased at the thought.

"Ah, Stephen," he said tactfully, "but you seem to forget we have been further abroad before, and in unfriendly waters. Would you rather be drinking your coffee in Boston? No? Shipboard off Brazil, even, or farther? Round the Horn and on the other side of the world? I am seeing the Admiral at ten o'clock. What should I presume to tell him?"

"It seems," Stephen said pensively after a silence "that were I unaccompanied, I should take the first transport home, regardless of the Secretery's orders. However - I suppose it has come to this, after all - were you to press for the country's interior I would go willingly with you."

"That is more than I could ask of you, but I am pleased." Jack was the very picture of happiness then, and he touched Stephen's hand gently. "Thank you."

"It is nothing," said Stephen, "in lieu of welcome, all I ask is we must go ashore at Quebec."

Jack nodded solemnly. "Your own affairs, I presume?"

Stephen nodded, but thinking of the matters concerning his letters made him silent and he said nothing more on the subject.


	13. Chapter 13

The wind blew fresh from the Northwest, ruffling the harbour waters into dancing whitecaps. Jack Aubrey's passage on Lavery's Persée was confirmed but for the Admiral's approval, and the Blue Peter was flying from the main hoist as she lay at anchor, taking aboard provisions and a final store of water.

The morning's activity had been rushed and frantic; Stephen's collection had been packed carefully in a seachest with plenty of straw, and still he fretted over a reliable man to take it to the harbour. Jack Aubrey, however, in an official capacity, paid a visit to Admiral Warren.

"Convenient you should be going inland, Aubrey," the Admiral said brusquely. He was a prime, stiff-backed, high-collared Admiral, full to bursting with the sort of energy Jack had seen in compact fighting-cocks. "It may be that I can give you more an official service. Do sit down, you make me nervous a-pacing like that."

Jack scarcely glanced out the window as he seated himself, but his plainfaced calm belied his anxious impatience - the tide was upon them and the shore officers were notorious for detaining sailors when seized by a fancy.

"I had hoped to find the Commander still here at Halifax, but it seems we have missed one another," Jack said in due course, settling his bulk in the rather accommodating armchair. "And -- how should I put it -- your Secretery seemed rather burdened."

"That blighter," scowled the Admiral, pounding his fist on the well-worn arm of his chair. "That miserable cur does everything he can to make everything more difficult. I'd be a lucky man if he'd even allow me to send orders to my own damned fleet sometimes! I tell you, Aubrey, don't ever let the Admiralty try to do you a favour, they'll send you a man like Appleton to make your life easier. Hah, easier! You've seen the man, a veritable font of wisdom. Molasses on a cold day in Hell would win a race against him."

"But what does your Appleton have against the Commander? Or me, sir? He seemed dead set against me the moment he laid eyes on me."

"Appletone is a shrew, Aubrey, we are all plagued by them. He has got a notion that a fully-stocked Supply Yard reflects better on us than a well-armed fleet. What has he to begrudge apart from our new Commander - Sir James Yeo, do you know - taking all our guns? Surely, Aubrey, you realize our armament depends on the convoys from England. We still haven't a proper iron mongery this side of the Atlantic, and a sorry business it is, too. Wait, but will you take a little sherry first?" The admiral waved a thick hand at the sideboard. "You are welcome, of course."

Jack, who had drunk too much of that sweet stuff in his time (and did not particularly care for it, being a grog man himself), said politely, "A very little if you please, sir. Dr. Maturin is my ship's surgeon, sir, and he tells me that drink would not be prudent - says that it enflames scar tissues - in truth it also seems to inflame him as well, ha! Ha!" He was glad for the excuse after all, a sweet sherry was sure to give him a pain about his temples in the early afternoon.

The Admiral gave a polite nod and a chuckle of aquiescence as he passed Jack the dainty cut-glass flute. "I am aware of these doctors and their rigorous physic. It is a pity not all field-surgeons are as diligent." He raised the glass to the light and examined the amber glow. "Well, your health, Aubrey, were all physicians as prudent as your fine Dr. Maturin."

"Indeed," said Jack, remembering quite fondly how appropriately imprudent Stephen was capable of acting if given the incentive. He took a small sip and the liquor clung to the underside of his tongue most disagreeably. He set the glass very carefully on the table at his elbow. "I had never seen him quite so aroused. But, Sir, the Commander."

"Yes, hang him, he's a brilliant tactician and a heart of British oak but, by God, the Navy Yard looks right poorly after his visit with the chalk. Took every scrap of iron he could pry out of their fingers. They'll have to wait for the next convoy, and with this damned seaboard action -" the Admiral glanced out to the wide, flat bay and the sea's horizon stretching away into a misty grey nothing. "-imagine what an American ship could do to a fully-loaded transport."

"Why, they'd never burn her, they would take her a prize and all of his Majesty's guns would be used against his Majesty's very ships," Jack scowled. "Better a man-of-war than a sea-barge anyway."

"But Aubrey," the Admiral clutched at Jack's sleeve and took him by the elbow. "Make no mistake, the Commander's a man of tactics, yes, but small, close actions he has not seen for some time. I was told your commands, until the Leopard had been frigates and the like."

"The dear Sophie was a tight little frigate," beamed Jack, scarely able to restrain his own pleasure at the rememberance, "and there's none that could match the joyful Surprise when she is well-handled. I have been quite fortunate to engage at close quarters aboard her and she was most responsive. She requires a steady hand and a careful stowing to govern her well."

"I have a packet for you," said the Admiral, pacing to his desk and reaching into a drawer. He took out a taut, canvas-wrapped packet and a letter bearing a stamped seal in wax. "You are just sort of the prime officer we need under Sir James and his Provincial Marine. They are sometimes so pitifully backward in the colonies, you know. You have not been upriver before now?"

"Never in life," said Jack, taking the packet with gratitude. He examined the letter with the Admiral's seal attached. "Sir, these orders are not a commission, am I correct?"

"You may find the voyage past Quebec rather harsh, mind you keep your feet dry, eh?" The Admiral shook his head. "No, of necessity it cannot be a commission. News of your escape from Boston and arrival here is, at present, aboard the fastest packet for England and will not be confirmed until word reaches the Admiralty. They will be heartily glad to find you alive. And in any case, there is no ship for you to command, not yet. But Sir James has taken timbers and framing for a pretty enough squadron, so perhaps you will have one in due course."

"Thank you sir," Jack smiled widely and shook the Admiral's hand with particular vigour. "I had hopes of returning to service. I would do no one any good, particularly my dear wife, were I to be laid up in ordinary." Then he shrugged and checked himself, as if suddenly aware of his boyish exuberance. "I mean, it is a terrible thing to be marooned with little hope, sir."

"I believe Sir James will be overjoyed to have you, Aubrey," said the Admiral, ushering Jack towards the door. "But if you tarry any longer I fear you will have to catch tomorrow's tide. Give my regards to Sir James, when you see him."

"Of course, sir." Jack saluted awkwardly, tucked the sailcloth packet under his arm and hastened back out the way he had come.

***

Jack Aubrey's natural happiness was overflowing when he repaired aboard the Persée. The good Captain Lavery greeted him pleasantly enough and showed a great deal of pride in ushering him about the trim little ship.

"She was French before she was taken," he explained "sweet-sailing, though she has seen rough service out here - in the winter the very seawater freezes in her seams. Devilishly cold, you know."

Jack cast an eye on the stout oaken beams and remembered the absolute chill of the Atlantic waters. "I am well aware, sir, I was compelled to rescue my good friend Dr. Maturin from Boston Harbour. He is not much of a sailor, though he has sailed with me for some years."

"Is that so?" Lavery clapped Jack on the back and led him abaft to the quarterdeck. "You amaze me, Aubrey, the cold could kill a man in under a minute. There are few men who would brave those icy waters, and even fewer would survive. None, I imagine, could do it single-handedly as you did."

A twitch passed over Jack's face before he smiled cheerfully and said "At the time, I didn't give a whit for my arm. In truth sir, I admit I hardly think of it now."

"Still, it is remarkable," and Lavery stepped aside to have a word with his coxswain about the method of their departure; the tide was at its peak and soon they would be underway.

Jack stood to one side and surveyed the neat deck and the Persées at work. The men were all carefully and soberly dressed, but there was no crisp embroidery here, no carefully-beribboned snowy duck trousers. Their blue jackets were slowly fading to grey and the hands had a quiet, pinched sort of resignation on their faces. It was a well-kept ship, to be sure, but Jack suspected there was no fault in the Captain. The strain came from the hostile seas and back-breaking blockades. The men were tired, but there was no drag in their steps when the orders were given to cast off and the Persée nosed out into the bay waters with a smooth sigh of contentment. She heeled well into the swells, setting into her course without griping or complaint. With the wind holding fair they were sure to make good time Northwards around the isle of Anticosti and into the delta of the great river St. Lawrence.

**

There was a certain thrill in standing upon the deck of a ship, any ship, with the living water coursing along her side. There was nothing better, Jack thought, except perhaps a command of his own - and his throat caught - if the Admiral's word carried weight with the new Commander. So Jack Aubrey remained on deck, opposite the Captain's holy windward quarterdeck, until they were well underway, and then he went below with the intention of rousing Stephen from his work. He expected to find the good doctor examining the entrails of some strange (yet no doubt fascinating) specimen, lost to the world.

Stephen was not knuckle-deep in a loathsome deep-water creature, nor even in serious contemplation of the particulars of a seashell. He was writing out a long letter in French and taking notations on several other sheets of paper. He shuffled the papers away when Jack rapped discreetly at the cabin doorway.

"I hope I am not disturbing you," Jack said, though he had already edged his bulk inside when Stephen shook his head.

"Not at all, Jack," Stephen stretched the knots from his aching back; two hours hunched at an unfamiliar writing desk had put an ignoble curvature in his spine. "I am told there are curious beasts - whales and porpoises - in the St. Lawrence, and I am with child to see them. There is a white creature somewhat like a narwhale that is said to sing like a bird. It is said to lead ships in passage around icebergs and the like."

"I did not know of any such beast," Jack said as he glanced around Stephen's little cabin. "If there were, it would be sure to put the river pilots and coxswains out of a job. Most remarkable. I am also certain the ice in the channel has melted - otherwise the Commander would not be in such a hurry to make way."

He was not in the habit of discussing his orders, even with Stephen who knew his mind better than anyone. As his Captain and commanding officer, Jack did not speak of his duties to Stephen - no, and could not - the unspoken laws of the chain of command forbade it.

But they were closer now than ever thay had been - closer, and in a way still so far removed. Stephen had recalled with some seriousness the Articles which governed their conduct. It was msiery, at least it seemed that way to Jack, for whom discretion came erratically and with intense effort. With Stephe it was quite another matter, for he was naturally secretive and often silent.

"We shall have two or three days fine sailing before Quebec," said Jack absently, reaching out tot he delicate place on Stephen's stiffened neck, where the skull joined vertabrae. Stephen's breath caught in his throat and he sivered. He did not pull away, however, and Jack's strong fingers worked at the knotted sinews.

"Jack -" said Stephen tersely "what dangers are there for us - this is not your command, the men do not know you -"

"We are guests aboard His Britannic Majesty's vessel Persée, not his prisoners. I hold no commission. I can do what I wish, for a time at least." Jack leaned over and nuzzled the nape of Stephen's neck. "We are quite at liberty."

Liberty, indeed, and the cramped cabin proved an awkward meeting place, though the rocking of the ship and their care diguised a great deal of activity. By land, Jack Aubrey was not a refined suitor by anymeans, but his advances at sea were quite different. There were no words, for an example, and an amount of mutual undressing to faciliate the pressing of skin against skin. Stephen steadfastly avoided those more recent scars of his acquaintance, and instead stayed within the more familiar territory of Jack's broad chest, his hips and muscular thighs. Jack, for his part, struck new soundings beyond the taut little bruises he had marked out with his teeth at the Pelican.

It was not until Stephen was pinioned by his own shirt, his arms twisted into the linen and pressed roughly to a bulkhead, that he managed to find his voice again.

"Jack, I must tell you something," Stephen gasped, writhing beneath Jack's most attentive tongue, "there is no doubt that I enjoy this attention - I am most pleased to see your health and energy restored. But as far as reciprocation, I fear --"

"Reciprocation?" Jack. "Whatever do you mean, my dear? Tell me what I must do and I shall do it."

Stephen scowled and drew his shirt back over his pointed shoulders.

"It is nothing you must do," he said blackly, "but I. I am accustomed to taking a course of physic - for my nerves and to aid sleep. In that it has proved most effective. But it has also had an effect on the... arousal, Jack. It is not that I do not relish your attentions, but I am... distinctly unable to respond."

Jack remembered vaguely his besotted consorting at the Inn of the Pelican and how Stephen had been very silent. "Why, then, I am so sorry," he said, attempting to set his own clothing into order, "and here perhaps I had though you found me an ugly cove. I am surely not worth the trouble."

When Jack hurried out of the tiny cabin, Stephen almost followed after him, to catch him up and tell him fiercely that looks were unimportant - but he was left with nothing upon his lips but a cooling trace of salt and let him go.


	14. Chapter 14

The river St. Lawrence had been the marine thoroughfare of a burgeoning nation for as long as there had been ships to sail it. In 1535, Cartier had sailed upriver, nearly to the foot of a bank of wide and dangerous rapids in search of friendly or willing natives. He had found the place, Stadacona, but his vessel could not be towed upstream against the current and eventually he had turned back the way he came. Later, the French had established a walled city, the city of Quebec, at the site of those rapids and held it successfully 200 years. It had not lasted, however, against the British persuasion and, though inhabited mainly by Frenchmen still, the presure of industry and trade had forged a weary truce.

So it came that a great many people passed through Quebec City, to journey Westward, heaving their precious cargo upriver in bateaux while devilish logmen and traders shot the foaming rapids perched on rafts and barges, grinning against the river spray. The great river was a challenging way, but the treacherous shoals and rapids were a far cry surer than the muddy tracks on lands some ventured to call roads. In winter, the potholes and ruts froze and were covered by snow, making the way impottible to traverse even after the path had been located - and spring was no better, when the ice melted and the roads became a seething morass of mud, sucking at cartwheels and boot-heels and the legs of packbeasts and travellers.

And then there were the Americans to consider, an agitated lot who posessed only a small amount of true military bravery and who backed it up quite fiercely with covering fire. The St. Lawrence herself was secure, thanks to the unfailing loyalty and diligence of the North American Station and commanders like Lavery, sweeping the salt waters on blockades - but the Southern shore was not. There were minor squabbles and brief, tense standoffs, and for the most part Americans kept their own routes open further South. The Hudson river, the Mohawk, Lake Oneida and an overland portage were all on friendly soil, and all had ferried the stores necessary for taking war into the squadrons of the Great Lakes.

Despite the dark spectre of war, the river was busy. For hundreds of years the native peoples had traversed its expanse in fragile canoes, precarious constructions of birchbark and pitch. It would take more than the threat of war to halt traffic and the canoes were still visible, loaded tot he gunwales with greasy pelts and even greasier trappes. The trappers, mixed descendants of those first natives and the colonial French, travelled hard and fast with their proud songs and flashing paddles. Merchant vessels still plied the waters, under the uneasy protection of modest swivel-guns mounted to rails and decks.

As the river's surface teemed with life, so did its depths. Perched alongside the stone cliffs and dense forest were all manner of waterfowl and in the eddies and currents swam vast schools of fish pursued by reptilian, eel-necked cormorants, splashing and diving in unrestrained joy. And once, a school of Stephen's fabled white whales danced alongside, craning their necks up at the men and chirruping saucily. In this way the voyage flew steadily and this fair winds, the only markings of their passage the ships bell and the steadily-narrowing shores of the river.

If ever Jack Aubrey resembled a caged creature it was now; watch upon watch he paced the leeward side of the quarterdeck and surveyed Lavery's charts. He had not spoken to Stephen in several days and his resolve was still strong.

Stephen, for his part, was occupied after a fashion by his French letters and could not have been said to truly miss Jack's prescence. He was rarely seen on deck, save when some unfortunate creature was netted or speared, or (in the case of the white whales) garrulous enough to draw his full attention.

The Persée was within one week's sail of Quebec when they were waylaid by foul weather. Currents and shoals were one thing and to be expected with little astonishment, but a storm blowing up on the starboard quarter was of more concern, there being little room to manuver in the channel.

Stephen had examined the white whales from the ship's hammock-netting and had to be gently disentangled and reminded of the rising weather. The deck was a hive of activity with hands striking topgallants and battening down hatches.

"You'd best go below, Stephen, if you wish to stay a little dry. There is a line squall coming up on our quarter and I expect it will catch us before the glass is turned," Jack said as he passed by.

It was then Stephen glanced anxiously over the taffrail towards the Northeast. The open sky, what little remained of it between the approaching storm and the land was a bilious yellow, awash in diagonal drifts of blue rain. Overhead, angry blue-grey clouds boiled and there was a flash of lightning. Instinctively, Stephen flinched, but not for the peal of thunder than struck out from the shore, but for the tickle of wind that came across bearing a spatter of raindrops that struck his eyelids and cheeks. Between the ship and the squall was only heaving black water, monumental swells that rocked the stalwart Persée like a hobby-horse. Stephen stumbled to the companionway ladder, gripping tightly for fear of toppling headfirst down the stairs.

Captain Lavery was at the helm, alongside his powerful coxswain.

"Aubrey, will you go below?" Lavery squinted out at the rising water.

"No, sir," said Jack as he shrugged into a battered and much-abused tarpaulin. "I wish to see the character of these waters."

The coxswain grinned; he was only recently volunteered and it had been his business hauling up and shooting down rapids so turbulent that that water ran white with foam. Lavery nodded and Jack peered out at the dark blue clouds, gaugeing the wind-line and the rocky shoreline too close for great comfort. The land itself would provide a lee, though it was not a reliable shelter. There would have to be strong hands at the wheel and a taut crew.

They were prepared for the blast, but not the eerie calm that preceded it. For a brief, yet interminable moment, the storm canvas lost its belly and shuddered, sagging forlornly. The hull straightened as it rose to the top of a swell. Everything seemed to hold its breath.

And then the squall struck, the first violent downdraught sending the Persée skittering broadside on. Even as the hands leapt to brace yards, blinding rain flew before the wind, stinging their exposed faces with flecks of hail. The brave ship tilted and slid down the face of the mountainous swell, water puring across her deck. Despite the tarpaulin, Jack was soaked through in an instant, the icy wind whipping the breath from his lungs and the sight from his eyes. Lightning flashed around him, forking from the shore and the clouds, the black foaming water pounding at the hull. He missed his handhold for a brief second and skidded on the quarterdeck, slipping to one knee and taking the rail hard against his hip. Jack wallowed, sparks dancing in his vision, before his lungs could react and draw breath. To his ears, the first gasp spounded like a beasts' bellow before dying. He fishined himself upright again, braced against the rail and holding fast with knuckles white to the bone. The Persée plunged and ran before the storm at a furious pace.

In the squall, the number-one glass smashed and the ship's bell was dismounted, though they were not run ashore. The masts and spars strained, flexed, but did not snap, and the storm canvas did not tear. By the end, by the time a fresh blue-and-white sky presented itself at last, they were still afloat.

It was the coxswain who passed Jack Aubrey down the hatchway to the doctor after the ship was set to rights; sent him down along with the usual assortment of foul-weather casualties. The ship's cook required dressings for fresh hot-water scalds when the stove bucked and sent his kettles flying. A topman had a badly wrenched shoulder, but he had not fallen, and one of the gunners had crushed a toe securing his carronnade. Stephen was quite content dealing with these minor hurts and cuts, and he bound up, soothed and snipped off the offending bits and pieces of the men until he came aft to his Captain.

Jack sat in his cramped cabin, sullenly hunched over upon a sea-chest, his breathing shallow. Stephen, with the ease long-borne of years, unfastened his waistcoat and peeled aside Jack's sodden shirt.

"There is nothing broken, at least." He swept across Jack's bared ribcage with tender fingers, nothing the spread of violent contusions. The perfect impression of his uniform coat, the buttons and seams, were imprinted there on his skin in blood red and violet stains. "You could easily have sprung a rib or two. Shall I bind them?"

"No," said Jack sharply, catching Stephen's fingers and moving them aside. "At least they do not pain me. Leave them."

Stephen pursed his lips sourly and wiped his damp fingers upon his coat.

"This wil never do, Jack," he said after an uncomfortable moment. "Physician as I am, I fear there are some hurts I cannont mend. If you insist you are well and whole, then so be it. But that is not the man I see before me. You are not yourself -- you are easily insulted, fragile, I dare not say 'weak'-"

"Oh, no, never weak," Jack muttered, "You have always spoken your mind plainly, it should not hinder you now."

Though Stephen was quick to anger, he was considerably slower in the showing of it and so he took a minute or two to stow away his lint and long rolled bandages.

"You are unbalanced," he said presently, "ill-humoured. You have required a proper dosing since we arrived at Halifax - and it you trust my word as a friend, I should say you have not been yourself since we set down this river."

"Hold there, Stephen --" Jack's voice was raised, though he was not fully incensed yet -- "I am changed, yes, so it happens you have had a hand in it. You saved my life back at Boston it is true, but maybe you have slain my ambitions! After all, there are a great many two-armed Post-Captains strolling the shores without vessels! Should they be denied their opportunities?"

"Is that was you fear?" Stephen cried, "You would prefer your own death to any possible future? Then you are defeated, even before you begin to fight!"

"For all love," Jack started to retract, but Stephen's frustration was unchecked.

"Sure, your hero Nelson carved a fine career for himself, let that not be a lesson, these is only your dear wife and family to remember as well, I am sure they shall not love you anymore in this condition - nor I, Jack. I should never love and respect you now."

It was not precisely what Stephen had meant to say - in his mind the argument had been more eloquent. But this, added to Jack's already wounded pride was too harsh a blow. There was a second where the anger dropped veils from Jack's eyes and Stephen saw revealed the whole naked and bloody truth - but in that instant Jack Aubrey's whole persona seemed to swell and comitt itself to indifference. His cheeks slowly flushed red and he stood, pointing forcefully at the door.

"You may take your leave, dear doctor," he pronounced, "I thank you for your concern."

Without further ripostes, Stephen gathered his items and departed. After he had gone, Jack sank back onto his locker, his hand groping blindly for the bruises across his ribcage. His fist hurt, but the gnawing ache did little to ease the tightness in his throat, nor the pounding of his heart. It cleared his thoughts a little, however, and after some effort, eventually he regained his previous composure.


	15. Chapter 15

So it happened, through plain circumstance and old-fashioned aversion, the two men did not speak, not for several days and certainly almost a week. It was not standoffish though, for a ship of any good size had many solitary nooks and crannies, secret places in which a man may evade pursuers, if even for a few brief moments.

Jack spent a good while in Lavery's great cabin, poring over his charts with a ravenous eye. While the Captain elucidated upon various subjects (he was a prodigal anecdotist and was glad of Jack's company) Jack studied the lakes and rivers, the small clusterings of towns, the rapids particularly, and the various lock canals and bateaux routes.

The passage beyond Quebec was a complicated and disorienting array of tow-scows, flat bateaux, even a marvel; a steam-powered vessel that plied the waters of the Cascade rapids. It was said to make the trip upriver between Quebec and Montreal, through those same dangerous rapids, in less that two day. Unheard of! There were still the Lachine rapids, beyond which the North American Station's vessels could not sail. It was a grim portage, though the men who tended it were hearty.

Jack's thoughts were on the Lake and its future; if Isaac Chauncey had managed successfully to bypass the British blockades and forts, then there was an altogether solemn possibility that the Americans were already armed - and armed far better than the British Squadrons.

He had plenty of time to ruminate as well, as the Persée regained her course and attained the high rocky cliffs of Quebec after six days of uncertain sailing. It was then Stephen finally came to Jack, a folded letter in one hand and a pot of salve in the other.

"I know your thoughts on the matter, he said pointedly, extending the small china pot with a grimace near to stoicism. After Jack had taken it and sniffed the contents with a dubious look on his face, he explained. "Rub it on those contusions every day and they will be gone within the week - no doubt they still trouble you.

And indeed, Jack laid the flat of his hand against his ribs, feeling the bunch and slide of damaged flesh. The bruises were dark, ink-purple and still swollen - it had been a blow that might have killed a lesser man, or flayed his chest to splinters.

"I thank you, Stephen," Jack said awkwardly, the memory of Stephen's words still rankling a little, "I had meant to ask you for something."

"I suspected," sniffed Stephen, "and I have asked for something as well. I am to go ashore in a few hours - Captain Lavery has given me leave - but I could not in clear conscience depart without giving you this -" and he held out the folded letter - "no doubt you know the sort. If I should not return, you will give it to Diana, I trust?"

"I shall," said Jack soberly, taking the packet. He frowned, "Though I do not relish being the bearer of ill news. Make certain you come back, won't you, Stephen?"

"Joy," said Stephen with a rare, brilliant smile, "For that I shall do my best and take long my pocket pistols."

**

Though the fortified city had sprung up in the New World, there was much about the narrow, crooked streets that were reminiscent of France and the colonial homeland. Merchants and sailors milled about the docks, while further above - a perilous climb up several cuts in sheer rock faces - the military encampment looked out over the expanse of rive from log-and-earthwork palisades. Stephen had no business in the upper town, and how relieved he was, then, when the very right of the path upwards made his knees tremble.

The man he was to meet was not unknown to him; not entirely, as an amateur naturalist he had corresponded with Stephen, and their acquaintance was founded on peculiarities of sinew and bone as much as on social pleasantry. Indeed Jean Coparde was a self-professed admirer of the rarer amphibians and reptiles, and Stephen had the idea that his great salamander (or what was left of it) might be of some use in furthering their friendship.

So Stephen's meeting, and no doubt his departure with any number of papers or small packages should not seem suspect in the slightest. In point of fact, Stephen decanted the sorry specimen himself, with double-refined spirits of wine, into a new jar he had reserved for the purpose. In particular he hoped that Coparde might qualify it as a greater or lesser specimen than the mean; he had tried to draw his own conclusions about the beast but his own expertise was limited and all his books were in his old seachest, carted ashore at Brazil by Barrett Bonden at the event of their exchange.

And also, Coparde had knowledge of a great many local shipping routes, some which Stephen's employer Sir Joseph Blaine knew about, and some which he did not. These routes were to be taken down and encrypted and sent back with the Persée. A copy was to be ferried westwards also, to Commodore Yeo and the Provincial Marine.

So Stephen Maturin was understandably nervous to be discovered, though it was unlikely that he was known to be in Canada - that was why he had taken the pocket pistols with him, those handsome matched weapons he had liberated from Choate at the Asclepsia in Boston. They made his coat and satchel bulge awkwardly but he was reassured a little by their weight.

The Lower Town had streets nearly as high and narrow as the climb towards the summit - greasy cobbled street that smelled strongly of urea and earthy manure. In addition to the dockyards, the merchants and traders had shops and stalls - in particular a glazier whose work seemed of a rare quality - and knots of people moved amongst the on their daily business. Stephen threaded between them, marking his progression by the pounding of blood on his ears. He had not realized the climb was so great from the shoreline. He paused upon the step of a humble stone church that squatted at the head of an open cobbled square. Humble indeed - Stephen set himself down upon a stair next to a threadbare prostitute who solicited even as he shucked off his shoes.

"Ala, my dear," he said, removing his wig to mop his brow with a disreputable kerchief, "I have only a few hours before I am due shipboard, though by chance would you know Maison Jument? I have business thereabouts."

The whore gave a gap-toothed grin and said "Special price for a Jack Tar, like, if you change your mind. Jument ain't too much farther up this way - you'll have to take a right up Sous La Fort."

Stephen thanked her and gave her a bit of coin, then put his shoes back on and took the street uphill from the church, following the whore's direction until he came to Jument House. It was a hulking, dark, mouldy rooming-house, shuttered and sullen. Stephen craned his neck to look up, and it towered above him a good four stories.

"Dr. Maturin? The voice startled him, but as he jumped to look round, he saw a tall, serious-mouthed Frenchman with a dark pigtail. The man smiled as though he was not accustomed, and held out a hand. "You must be Dr. Maturin, from what I have heard of you, and you are carrying specimen jars. I am M'sieur Coparde. It is good to see you, sir."

Stephen recovered his voice and said what a pleasure it was to meet him, "Though I am hardly recognizable, I think, not after the storm that blew up a week ago and nearly had us wrecked."

"I must confess I am surprised you made such good time," Coparde led the way through the back halls of the rooming-house, and they began to climb a flight of steeply-angled stairs. "We have much to discuss, and I am very much excited to see your observations of the specimen."

Stephen bit back the mutters of complaint from his aching legs and concentrated on getting himself and his possessions up the stairs in one piece. The talk of naturalism was necessary, for the hallways and stairs upward led them past rented rooms, compartments filled near to bursting with humanity. He doubted any of them could be trusted.

"I have found my observations quite superficial," replied Stephen, his hand clutching at his bulging pocket as one of the tenants eyed him with suspicious from an open door. "I should be welcome of another opinion." Eyes stared, doors opened cracks and slammed shut again, and all the while Coparde led him ever upward.

"If there is an observation to be made, it is said I am the man to do it," said the Frenchman as they climbed what Stephen hoped was the last set of stairs - these were frail and rickety, barely more than rough ends knotted together with tarred twine and broken nails.

Finally, Coparde ushered Stephen into a tent-shaped garret streaming with dusty shafts of orange light from the setting sun. Ill-knit clapboarding and roof slates kept out the weather, but only barely, and the windowpanes were smeared with grime. Upon one expansive wall were specimen bottles and skulls, grinning in the amusement of preservation. Against the other wall was a bed consisting of a well-beaten straw pallet and numerous patchworked coverlets. The effect was both austere and yet, utterly comforting to Stephen; it reminded him of the long-eschewed physical comforts of a home on the dry, unyielding land.

"We may speak for an hour or so - no more or the landlord will become suspicious. It was he who watched our ascent so carefully," Coparde waved his hand at the surrounding room, "and while we talk I will trouble you for that great amphibious creature you have brought."

"It is rather worse for wear," said Stephen sheepishly, withdrawing the carefully-wrapped bottle. "My transportation offers few luxuries and quite often items disappear forever. I have known a thirsty seaman to drink the spirits I use to preserve! This particular specimen has survived the smashing of its bottle, the waters of Boston Harbour and the freezing wilds of the Atlantic Ocean and Halifax, where I was finally able to rebottle it."

Coparde gazed intently at the creature, turning the jar about to better view the content. As he mused, and Stephen showed him the anatomical observations, Coparde filled in the silences with his own information.

"My word, a hideous delight! - there is a route that runs inward from the coast a good twenty miles South - such remarkable skin, the very texture of it! - and there is a local ironmonger who is working for his own livelihood. He hasn't taken a job in months and yet he works nonstop at the forges. And you say these diagrams are accurate? Dr. Maturin, you are a wealth and a joy!"

The conversation continued in such fractured forms for their allotted hour, until Stephen's loose pages were filled with his once-encoded notations. He would take them away with him and encode them twice more and then, only then would he relinquish control of them. They would also be copied for Captain Lavery.

Stephen folded the precious papers and pinned them inside his shirt. The details were there, in his head, but the rough map was invaluable and he would hate to have to recreate it from memory.

"When you go," said Coparde, wrapping the Hellbender up again in its rag, "it were best we were seen to have been discussing your finds." He dug into a corner of his straw mattress and pulled out a handful of pages filled with sketches and naturalist's notes. These he gave to Stephen, smiling. "It is of course even better if the evidence of our talk is physical. From the wall of shelves he took a toothy skull and presented it to Stephen.

"I see from the teeth it must be castor canadensis, the much-prized fur beaver, unless I am drastically mistaken."

Coparde gave the skull a loving pat upon its dome and said "No, you are quite correct, dear Doctor, and those papers are some rough notes I used for my treatise upon it. May they give you some use."

"I thank you," Stephen shook his hand warmly, "Should there be another time we may sit and chat, I would be most obliged."

"Perhaps when we are not at war," said Coparde, "and when we may trust our enemies to be honest."

Duly noted, Stephen bid his farewell, took the skull and papers and departed the garret.

Night had fallen during his session with Coparde, and the crooked hallways of the rooming house were dark. Raucous laughter and the sounds of crying children drifted by as Stephen passed various doorways. A grimy man with a walleye peeked out eagerly as he passed - then scrabbled away before he had gone.

On the stoop of the house he paused. After the musty oppression of the tenement the breath of fresh air that wafted across his face was more welcome than any breezes he had weathered at sea. The narrow street curved away from him at both sides. One way climbed steeply towards the cut-road, and the other (infinitely more preferable) sloped away at a breakneck angle.

He had not gone ten paces when a scuffle of booted feet and a low growl came from behind him. At the same time a great crushing weight descended upon the point of his right shoulder. He cried out, a shrill, pitiful wail that surprised even himself, as he twisted away from his assailant. The next blow fell wider; on his wrist and the papers he grasped flew wide, scattering in the breeze and gathering along the front steps of the houses.

The precious beaver skill clattered to the ground as Stephen reached for his left-hand pistol. It was primed, cocked, and snagged on nothing as he drew it from his pocket. He shot at the dark figure, and the shot did hit its target - though Stephen saw it was not a mortal wound, only grazing the flesh of the leg.

By now his cry and the pistol's report had drawn men with lanterns at the high end of the street and as they approached Stephen's attacker pulled away, swore viciously and fled, limping terribly, down the street and around the corner.

After Stephen had picked himself up (and gathered what few of the papers remained, sorrily mudstained and bedraggled) the lanterns reached him and he perceived they were sailors.

"Dr. Maturin?" and in a halo of light Stephen saw it was Lavery's coxswain bearing a pistol on his belt. His heart leapt with happiness despite the numbness in his arm and the broken pain across his shoulder. "We're to escort you back to the ship, sir, Captain's orders. Your friend Captain Aubrey was most concerned 'a course."

**

Jack had taken an uneasy watch, feigning slumber, stifled and uncomfortable in his cot, not knowing Stephen's business or even his methods of conducting it. But the Doctor was to be trusted on land, though he was all but coddled at sea, and so he had forestalled his own worry with letter-writing, and when that proved a frustrations beyond even his good nature, he abandoned that, redressed and had summoned the coxswain to look to the Doctor and bring him home safely.

Now, seeing Stephen returning in tow gladdened him and he could easily have written a thousand letters home for the look on Stephen's face.

"My dear Doctor!" Jack said as Stephen traversed the gangway, "I trust they did now tear you away from anything of import?"

"Quite the contrary," Stephen was grasping his shoulder and made a sour face and jack's honest concern, "For though I shot a man it was hardly a matter of import."

"Got to him just in the nick," said the coxswain with a grin," had to pry the bugger off the doctor, we did."

"He exaggerates of course," said Stephen as they went below, "I didn't catch a good luck at the man, though I did shoot him - perhaps in the leg. Oh! I hope it gives him misery! He fetched me such a blow on the clavicle I thought I was near paralyzed. I did not," he said wryly, "Stay to see if he was, as the coxswain says, a bugger."

Jack failed to contain his mirth as Stephen had suspected, and while he chuckled, Stephen unpinned the packet of papers from his shirt. The outside pages were slightly damp with a nervous sweat but were still legible, their cipher begging to be further encoded, their secret screaming to be sent homewards with all possible dispatch. He laid them out upon his meagre writing-desk once Jack had wiped his eyes.

"It is serious," he said, separating the precious map and showing it to Jack, "Perhaps more so than you had expected. There is trade between the iron mongery here and our enemy to the South. I have the particulars of the route, but not the volume of the trade. How many cannon might a merchant produce if he were well-paid?"

Jack's face was too grave after his brief mirth; he looked at the map and grumbled.

"I could not say for certain, but the tide may turn with the addition of even one ship to a side - even four guns, nay, two, would serve as a deterrent enough. A blasted poor situations for the Provincial Marine if this is true." Jack's shrewd gaze took in the distances, the few miles between the two shores, the multitude of suitable landing spots, and that dreadful, deadly smuggler's route inwards towards the Americas, marked in red ink plunging Southwards. "You are sure of this? If we are to act, we must have a proof beyond a doubt. What will you do, then?

Stephen pursed his lips as he thought, fingering his bruised shoulder. The chances that the information was false could hardly be entertained, yet he was certain he did not fully trust Coparde - the man was gracious, yes, but honest perhaps only to an end.

"I could not say what I will do, indeed I very nearly betrayed my own excitement upon the arrival of your watch of men. I am not certain I could vouch for the truth of the matter. I should loathe to look a fool before Sir Joseph and indeed the Commodore."

"Yet we many have little choice in the matter, Stephen," Jack sighed deeply, "Lavery means to depart on the morrow, and he was anxious for any message you may have."

"I can send what I have," Stephen said, setting out his pen and inkpot, "Though I should think I'll add a proviso - no accounts are sure these days."

Stephen transcribed, and Jack sat back against he bulkhead and watched him easily. Even though they had not spoken for some days, the atmosphere was not strained - indeed, it was near peaceful, despite the state of Stephen's shoulder and Jack's fresh anxiety.

"Do you figure Coparde to be a traitor?" Jack asked after Stephen had set aside his pen and reached for a nub of sealing wax.

"We all of us could be traitors given the right price," said Stephen dryly, "there may be a price for any man."

That put Jack into a contemplation that broke only when, after wiping ink and spatters of congealed wax from his hands, Stephen came to his in comfort. He reached gently for the buttons on jack's shirt and waistcoat, unfastening them as Jack rumbled in approval. When he had at last bared Jack's chest, Stephen bent to it, stroking the pink-white ridge that ran across the right clavicle. These tender scars normally lay hidden - and at other times Jack had scowled and shrugged away the attention - now, he allowed Stephen's fingers to trace the tight, neat suture marks at the seam of his shoulder.

"Do you suppose," Stephen mused, "we are to be disturbed at all?"

"The watch changes in a little more'n two hours," Jack hand his hand along Stephen's forearm, across his shoulder. He unknotted Stephen's hastily-tied cravat and hooked a finger in the collar of his shirt. "Then you are at leisure, dear Doctor?"

"When you wish it," and Stephen doffed his wig and coat in one hurried movement, and shortly thereafter Jack's shirt was on the floor and Stephen's ink-spotted breeches soon followed.

The two had not met before with such measured urgency, not on both parts; even as Stephen thought to let Jack take his own pleasure, he was aware of a stirring within himself - indeed a deep and practically ancient feeling he had almost forgotten. But it startled him so that momentarily he took his mouth from Jack's and his hands from Jack's hair and took a gasp of air.

"Stephen, dear, whatever can it be?" Jack's attention was drawn, and so Stephen twitched a covering smile, relished the fresh sensations and traced the corner of Jack's lower lip with one finger.

"A momentary inflammation in my shoulder, it is nothing at all."

"Then that is well," said Jack as he unfastened Stephen's shirt with teeth and fingernails, "I will mind it for you."

Perhaps Stephen had taken more pleasurable company with a woman, for a whore is not as rough as a sea-captain though she be as ready, but he could not recall such a time. It did not concern him in the slightest when Jack's hand caressed him - neither did it concern him when, together with hands and mouths slickened, muscles straining, they spent together. It was a peculiar satisfaction.

And afterwards, when Stephen inspected the fading great contusion across Jack's ribs, he only griped good-naturedly and allowed him to smooth more of the pungent salve on it.

"And tomorrow we must make ourselves presentable for we are to meet the General at the fort, and we must not look out of sorts. 'Specially your coat, Stephen, I know you was secretive tonight but it looks like something the rats were gnawing on."

Into Jack's collarbone, Stephen muttered something about feeding some amount of the coat to a particular Post-Captain and that made Jack chuckle instead. All was quiet until they were rudely awoken by the changing of the watch. Jack started awake at the first strike of the bell and was half-dressed by the last. He left Stephen's cabin with his blue coat over one shoulder, an impudent grin of satisfaction on his face.


	16. Chapter 16

Until he had the proper time to examine Quebec from the river's edge, Stephen was unaware of that a dramatic stronghold it was. The natural raise of the land between the Lower Town and the Upper was dramatic - more than fifty feet in places, and of an unusual vertical plate of black shale dripping with iron rust stains. Far above he could see the ensign flying on a rough flagpole inside the pallisade, and just make out the hungry, open mouths of the long 32-pounders.

All this he contemplated while Jack bid his farewells to Captain Lavery and the Persées and their sea-chests were lugged ashore. The miracle was not lost on Jack either, for he looked up at the hilltop and swore.

"Hellfire! A man would have to be mad to launch an assault at that, Stephen - at least before luncheon. Let us stow this baggage and then draw up a battle plan besides."

Conveniently close to the docks was the Maison Chevalier, which in its time had evolved from a simple residence to a welcoming coffee-house and inn. Jack was drawn towards it instantly as the wholesome aroma of roast coffee beans scented the air all around. Stephen felt his dry mouth begin to water with the anticipation of it.

"And anyways," said Jack as he gazed at the house with shining eyes, "I could hardly say that stuff we have drunk aboard was proper coffee at all."

For a reasonable sum they rented the last room and had a boy take their seachests to it. But both were sorely tempted by the coffe and they each took a cup, heady and steaming, to eat with their luncheon at a small table.

"Have you met the Governor?" asked Stephen after his first scalding mouthful.

"Sir George is a fine military man," said Jack reflectively, "and good with the matives - and the French - but bureaucrats should not be so finely poetical - it makes for queer notions. He has some odd view of trees - or rivers, it is, for they branch accordingly! Ha! Ha!"

Stephen stirred his coffee unamused. His mouth tightened into a bloodless line. "But his policy, Jack, what of it? If I were to judge a man by his witticisms my company would be pitiable."

"I hope that is not a slight, dear Stephen, and let Sir George's arboreal and fluvial remarks pass - I did not conjure that association.

"Consider it water beneath the bridge," said Stephen with no more expression than a dead man. Jack's eye twinkled merrily and his raised his noble mug in appreciation.

"There, Stephen! You may say you haven't a humour but black bile, yet your good temper betrays you. Keep it about you when we pay our respects, will you? I'd hate to give the Governor an incorrect representation of you - I do believe he was expecting a sharp-toothed verminous creature."

"Surely the Governor understands I am beholden to him as I am to any of my superiors," said Stephen mildly, "Even you, as predicactably jocose as you are today."

Jack leaned in towards their coffee mugs a moment and his voice dropped to a low rumble. "I should be happier once the Great Lakes are within our sight - and Sir George may yet surprise us. We may have a place! A use and a purpose and my heart longs for a fresh command. True, some may think I am ill-suited now for leadership but I shall not allow that to shrivel my courage.

This provoked a tiny sliver of a smile from Stephen and he said "It is well to see you have passed that black way of thought yourself, for a mere two weeks ago you were moaning the unfairness."

"Oh hang it," said Jack, beaming for secretly it pleased him, "Is a man not entitle to grieve?"

"Only if he leaves off," but Stephen himself was well at ease and let Jack continue.

"I had hoped perhaps to raise a proper tailor in this town - you can see my coat is rather the worse for wear, nevermind the rest of me!"

Stephen knew it, and he had tried to brush the dark bloodstains out at the Asclepia, and the soaking they had both taken in Boston Harbour had loosened - but not altogether erased - the damnable marks. And then there was the sinister shot-hole, looking for all the world like a moth's work, nearly hidden in the fold of Jack's pinned-up sleeve. A tidy shot it had been, shattering the humerus and putting a nick in the brachial artery - in fact Stephen marvelled that there was so little blood upon the coat in the first place. Still, for all its tidiness, the evidence was there - or not, as the case was - now Jack's broad shoulder sloped only to the awkward empty sleeve. Instead, he said only;

"I feel that Sir Prevost may make a fair exception to you, Jack - though it would be wise to lay in proper clothing while we have the moment."

When the coffee was little more that cold grounds, theystrode out to the street in search of the tailor. And Jack did find one, a licenced military tailor in a shop along a narrow street that was already known to Stephen.

"When you sent Lavery's men after me, they found me here," Stephen sniffed, recalling his assailant of the previous evening. He had recovered most of the Naturalist Coparde's papers on the fur beaver, but even as he looked he saw one, crushed to a pulp in the gutter, the ink a hopeless grey smear. "I did not fance we should be returning so soon."

Jack looked about at the tall, imposing houses crowding over the narrow street.

"If I had know it would be such a violent place I should not have let you go ashore."

"Oh," said Stephen drily, "Indeed I could not think of a hundred ways I might be injured aboard a man-of-war, not one full of drunken waisters and a full store of gunpowder. Tell me again how safe it is when we might be fired upon or sunk at any minute."

"I believe you are a pessimist at heart," Jack said mildly, "And anyway let us be dressed."

They exited the shop a good hour later, and Jack carried a modest bundle of shirts and cravats under his arm. Stephen's bundle was large, only by the good fortune of the tailor having a handsome black coat at hand 'too good to let waste,' which a client had left behind and which fitted Stephen like a well-worn glove. Jack was an unorthodox client and the tailor had taken careful pains in his measuring - it was a job done in haste, for likely within a few days they would depart Quebec and an officer's coat must not be done shabbily.

So, though it was with a fresh shirt and cravat, it was in the sorry old blood-and-salt-stained coat that Jack saw the Governor General of Canada, Sir George Prevost


	17. Chapter 17

The Governor Sir George Prevost was an upright military man, dark-browed and serious, but his introductions were pleasant and even Stephen found himself liking the man. He had been prepared for the regular boorish tyrants, those difficult individuals fobbed off on the colonies as a way of keeping them at arm's length. Those men were of little use as tacticians, or even as leaders - yet Prevost had a charming smile when he used it, and he was friendly enough.

"So you are Sir Joseph's pride and joy," Prevost beamed as they shook hands, "the King's fighting Captain Aubrey and his very own physician. Doctor Maturin, it is so good to finally make your acquaintance. Your papers reached me this morning at breakfast."

And standing in the sedate - but make no mistake, luxurious - quarters with the silver plain of the St. Lawrence curling below, Jack found himself ill-at-ease. Perhaps it was the hard rock and not rolling waves beneath the planking - or, perhaps as the Royal Navy's representative he was not singularly resplendent. He gazed out at the river with a hungry eye.

"These are not easy time in which to govern wisely," said Sir George to Stephen, "For certain, you understand the difficulties of a second tongue. The Frenchmen trust me now, at least, and it had taken much hard work for them to do so. So you understand my reluctance to set upon them in haste."

"It is a delicate matter, no doubt," he agreed, "yet my instructions are direct from Sir Jospeh and he is very concerned."

"As are we all. If it is as you say - if the French citizens are supplying the enemy with ordnance made from ore of these lands - from England's forges by God! - then the balance of power is compromised. Captain Aubrey - " and here Jack broke from his own reverie and attended politely, "- doubtless you are aware of the naval force that has been dispatched inland?"

"I do, Sir, that is Captain - Commodore - Yeo and Barclay, Mulcaster, Gray and timbers and frames for several vessels. That is also most of the surplus carronade from the Halifax Stores as well. And, is it 300 men?"

Prevost beamed; Jack's tactician's mind focused on the particulars, "So you have been well-informed, Captain Aubrey, indeed - timbers and framing. There are excellent carpenters who can knock up a vessel in six weeks, no more."

"I find that a miracle, Sir," Jack said, "surely they cannot have begun already? From all I know the Commodore is perhaps two weeks ahead of us."

"They have begun directly," affirmed the Governor. His eyes were gleaming and Jack could swear he saw in them a particular excitement. "Our waterways are the arteries of this country! We must protect their every ebb and flow."

Jack raised an eyebrow in private expression to Stephen as if to say, "a man must be a bureaucrat or a brilliant tactician to turn a phrase" - and no doubt Jack had finally been won over.

"It comes to this," said Sir George as he laid out a map of the current seat of war upon his desk. "Our lands are threatened and we must be made safe. It would be madness to send an Army without a Navy, and we are so short of proper, seagoing officers here - Captain Aubrey, given that you are in such close relation with the indispensable Dr. Maturin it would be treasonous to prevent your progress. You shall travel Lower and Upper Canada with ease, dear sirs, I shall commend you - though you understand I cannot promise - to Commodore Yeo and you may be assigned a vessel. By God, if I have anything to do with it you shall be."

Jack nearly wept with joy at the Governor's proclamation, and still he was pleased by the proposition a good hour later when he and Stephen returned to their smallish inn-room above the coffee house.

"I find Sir George much more of a strategist than a warrior - and maybe it is good, too. From what we have seen of these Canadas, the people are not abused, they do not gripe unnecessarily," Jack observed. "Even the pressure of war des not dampen their spirits."

"There was that ruffian that set upon me," Stephen sniffed, "I pray you think of that when you ay the people are quiet and contented - my bones still feel the ache.

"Ah, dear Stephen," Jack sighed, "You will mend. I suppose you can be thankful it were not your skull."


End file.
